


The Wayfaring Stranger

by Phantomwriter05



Series: The Grail of Prague Saga [3]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: 30's/40's Movie Serial content, Accidental Incest, Angst and Tragedy, Dracula (2013) - Freeform, Evil Cultist Mask of Pre-History, Extremely Dark Subject Matters, Forbidden Love, J.R.R. Tolkien's Universe is Pre-History, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Freeform, Mina Murray - Freeform, Pre-World War II intrigue, Professor James Moriarty - Freeform, Pulp Action and Adventure, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are real events in the Universe, The Fall of Númenor, The Necromancer - Freeform, Tormented Lovers, Toxic Mother and Son Relationship, Tragic Romance, post-movie: Downton Abbey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 159,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26662024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomwriter05/pseuds/Phantomwriter05
Summary: VOLUME I: In the Season of 1936, Downton Abbey has become the center of High Society in all the Empire as endless suitors from Eton, Harrow, Cambridge, and Oxford come by the train full, panting for a chance to glimpse the house's prized and beautiful young roses - Sybbie Branson and Marigold Crawley. But the carefree joy of idyllic girlhood romance in the bloom of a grand summer in the picturesque English Countryside is threatened by a deep pervasive gloom. Fore it is in the overgrown stone ruins of the once village of Downton that there sits, unconquered to the last, Crawley House. And in the seclusion of that last homely house, a brooding young adventurer is haunted by a demon in his past and future which threatens The House of Grantham - lost in the joyful excitements of young love's whimsical mystic in Yorkshire's wholesome green groves.
Relationships: Cora Crawley/Robert Crawley, George Crawley & Marigold Crawley, George Crawley & Mary Crawley, Sybbie Branson & George Crawley
Series: The Grail of Prague Saga [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775908





	1. Prologue - Of The Comet and The Necromancer

"There is a demon that lives in his past. A demon that lives off a hate … mmm … **a** _**powerful hate**_."

The talk in the drawing room of Grantham House in London, in the summer of 1936, had stopped immediately. They were drawn to the smooth and continental voice of a young black man from New Orleans that addressed them. He had been sitting on the sofa in the crimson painted drawing room designed by Lady Grantham herself at the tender age of seventeen. He had quietly been whittling away a block of wood, carving some sort of mythical animal out of it. He had not said a word but had heard everything. And in that time Jonah Robinson had not stopped smirking to himself as he quietly carved and sanded on a towel that Lady Grantham provided for him.

Sybbie had been sitting right next to him, lounging back on the cushions as if she were some Egyptian queen. A group of titled and proper young suitors had madly gathered around her, all of them laughing at shit that ain't funny, and looking like bucks in heat. All of them trying to mount the fairy tale beauty like it was mating season. All night they had been crashing their antlers with one another for her and Marigold's attention. They had nothing to say but veiled insult and boisterous bragging of their superior athleticism and sportsmanship. All in the vain attempt of offering Sybbie's heart an alternative, trying to turn her head away from the nonsense that was fed to her.

That being the nonsense that George Crawley was some sort of hero.

The largest problem that most people of a certain class and privilege in the British Empire had with George in 1936, still remained, that he simply existed. For most of the boy's life he had been as close to a figment of Lady Hexham's imagination as it got. George was spoken more often than not as a pulp character in his aunt's magazine, than an actual person. Having been exiled to America at a young age, fleeing from some trouble with the law concerning an incident at Brancaster Castle between Mirada Pelham and the loveliest of the young roses of Downton Abbey. Since his escape to the new world long years ago, the youth's existence was fact, but relegated to a distant character of far off relevancy to the House of Grantham. For so many of the Peerage it had been an unspoken, universal, truth that Ms. Sybil Branson would be heiress someday of all the Downton fortune and swag. And as such, while George Crawley smuggled and worked countless jobs in New York to survive, had fought as a vigilante in New Orleans, and Bounty Hunted and raced on the Texas Border and in Mexico. Back home, Downton had become inundated with young suitors and their grannies and mamas. All in order to groom the lovely young girls reared so gently in the gothic manor castle for future brides. Their fortunes set to be harvested when their hearts were cultivated by the romantic whims of cultured lads with ancient names when the girls came of age.

It was in the eight years of George's absence from his family's life and home that Downton Abbey had become quite the societal destination. The Crawley family growing more popular the older the girls got and the larger the Downton Estate, as well as Lady Mary and Tom Branson's Motor Company, grew. It was common knowledge from plenty of American born Dowager Ladies that George Crawley "must simply die soon". There was a wicked sense of excitement from coroneted Countesses and Duchesses at the prospect of the boy's half buried, sun bleached, skeleton lying somewhere in the Mexican badlands even as they spoke.

So one could only imagine the sheer outrage, the blind rage of dowagers and their daughter-in-laws when decade old schemes fell to not when news spread like wildfire in London that George Crawley had returned. Having taken a sludge hammer to his mama's wedding day, by leading a rebel army against Lady Mary's mercenaries in open and bloody battle before retaking Downton Abbey and the county. And while high society swore to never forgive him for it, they had all put their ears out to the rumblings of the fee that the London Metro Museum was paying him. The rent on being lent an African Ruby that he battled a final duel with Professor James Moriarty – The Napoleon of Crime himself - for in the crypts of the St. Louis Graveyards in New Orleans. And that was not to say how much ancient treasure that youth returned home with from his many adventures over the years in the hills of Mexico, or the pirate's gold that he had dug up in the old French New Orleans graveyards.

How much his founded fortune accumulated wasn't disclosed, but they did hear that it was surely enough for the youth to have bought all of Lady Mary's debt on the Estate. A prospect that troubled the gentry when he immediately suspended his mama's high county taxes and took her as his personal prisoner and hostage. But the tenants and farmers were more than grateful to feel the squeeze of the Grantham taxes disappear in such hard times as well as to learn of the captivity of the tyrant Lady Mary Crawley. Though all of high society in the Imperium were appalled that George, as Downton's new creditor and Lady Mary's captor, demanded his mama ransom be the paid to the Estate's debt. They all were intrigued by, what they would assume, was a new and eligible bachelor with money to spend.

But quickly were they all disappointed by the cowboyish dressed young man with hard bitten 'Yank' accent and perfectly grown out waving curls of raven. He was tallest of the youths of his age, and darker as well - having spent many years in arid and hot places from the American South to the North American Southwest. He was certainly handsome, a maiden's dream in many ways, charming to a fault, but thoroughly uninterested in society. His character was pocked with his late papa's apathy of societal rules and intrigues. Worse, he was as sarcastic and flickered in wit as Lady Mary Crawley. He spent his time with servants, farmers, and the common people more than he'd ever give a Lord or Lady the time of day.

It was a cardinal rule of the upstairs world of Downton Abbey that at no time, at any cost, was George called upon to solve a domestic problem within the house, nor to help in any way. For fifty years the Grantham way of doing things, conducting business, both public and private, was to be gentlemanly, ladylike, and diplomatic. But the youth in question was from a harder Jesuit school, taught and trained in apprenticeship by old adventures, master martial artists, magicians, and a science pirate, since boyhood. All of these experiences were wed in the environments that he lived through in the eight long years he was stranded in Depression stricken America - formative years.

Some might have even said that George 'growing up' around and amongst hard men and women, and even harder circumstances had made the heir to the House of Grantham as implacable as the many terrors and wonders he had seen and experienced in many years away from Downton Abbey and his family. And it was upon returning home to Grantham County that he had very little patience or tolerance for niceties or the minutia of county society life. To be blunt- as was his specialty - George used a hammer for the family's usual clay sculpting style of social management.

If someone offered someone insult, George 'shark punched' them with unfiltered retaliation with a haymaker of confidence shattering savagery of wit. If someone did something reprehensible, George Crawley took them by the neck, like a spring chicken for Easter dinner, and throttled the apology out of them- as Larry Gray learned the hard way at his very last dinner at Downton Abbey. And to him, there was never a 'complicated' issue, only 'chicken shits' that avoid lasting solutions in favor of back stabbing in dark corners. Everything was black and white. He was blunt, ill-tempered, cuttingly sarcastic, and utterly uninterested in the county's societal troubles. He saw the leading families countryside lives as silly and trivial, and he'd rather 'put two in the brain' than hear of their gossip.

Simply put: the boy wanted to be left alone. And if engaging him in the troubles of society or aristocracy, he'd find the quickest and most terribly lasting solution to even the slightest problem. George Crawley was interested in justice and lasting deterrents, rather than tea and plotting.

The young man's politics was another point of contention.

For most young men of a certain age and class of privilege in England - if not in Europe as a whole - there were only three options which they could choose … Royalist, Socialist, or Fascist. George Crawley returned from America not believing in either three ideologies, nor did he throw his lot behind Tory or Labour either. The boy was a Constitutionalist, a Republican, both in the American Political sense and the political ideology of his home. As the last of the Royal House of York, a descendant of the ardent supporters of the Jacobite cause of old, a Catholic convert, and famous for his disdain for the Aristocracy, George Crawley refused to support the British Crown at a very young age.

Yet, no one needed to be told of the long and bitter hatred between the Royal Family and George Crawley. In particular had the childhood of George been dominated by the destructive conflict between him and Edward, Prince of Wales. A rivalry started in Darkest Africa, escalated by a Royal Decree and the stealing of Queen Mary's Indian Bejeweled necklace from her own treasure room. It would reach its climax with the "Grantham County Massacre" and sacking of Downton Abbey by soldiers from "The Black and Tans" disguised as German Mercenaries. But it would end at the Horn of Africa, were the Prince's warship, chasing a Science Pirates famed Clockwork submarine, was sunk. His pursuit of a wounded young boy who escaped the last stand at Downton Abbey had cost a thousand men their lives. The Prince of Wales, as a prisoner on the Sikh Prince's vessel, was made to watch the mass execution of all his men, before he himself was ruthlessly tortured and broken. When the Royal family was sure of his death, the prince was found months later, in the Caribbean. Every nerve had been flayed, while the royal heir was seen running across the beaches half-mad and stripped naked.

Afterward, never again did the Royal House of Winsor come after George Crawley or his heirs, but long and bitter is the hatred felt between the two houses … even till this very day.

Yet, despite his hatred for the very foundation of the Imperium's ancient governance, the boy refused both Socialism and Fascism. His reasoning was sighted as simply living in the American South for a time. He had seen, quite clearly, what a bludgeoned hammer that large government bureaucracy could be used as against those the bureaucrats deemed 'unworthy' of the State's help. He had seen "Jim Crow" in effect in Democratic controlled Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He had gone undercover in New Orleans to Ku Klux Klan rallies and watched and listened to women such as Margaret Sanger and her Feminists as they railed openly against the "Degenerate Negro". These women, who had once fought for the vote, now held their end of the bargain with the late President Wilson and the Democratic Party. He watched them as they stood at pulpits, passionately and wildly did they encourage all true white women of conscious and morality to go out and vote against 'the animal' that was the Republicans.

As anyone should know, the "Grand Ole Party" was nothing but rich men in New York, unwashed 'Niggers', and sketchy and trickster Chinamen. Together, this coalition of 'evil' - most of which had been George's friends - would put women back in chains. So it was, hearing such hateful rhetoric, and fighting people like them on the Bayou and in over grown cotton fields of New Orleans. The boy having killed County Commissioners, City Councilmen, and even a Senator, while they all wore the white hoods and robes of the Klan, had ensured that George Crawley could never trust in the Socialists and Fascists fantasy of an all-powerful benevolent godlike government.

The boy simply believed in Common Law, Free Trade Capitalism, and a British Constitutional Republic. No Aristocrats, no House of Lords, and _No Royal Family_. Yet, he would fight also against some great and all-knowing State to champion the oppressed. All three sides, from the titled peer in Belgravia, BUF Cadet marching in parade, to the leftist radical on the East End, saw George Crawley as an anarchist, a Jacobin, and at worst a traitor to his class and House.

He was an aristocrat who was openly hostile to the Royal Family- calling them 'Hanoverian Tyrants'. He was an unrepentant Catholic- friend of the Jew and their dream of Judea - and an enemy of the Nazi and Communist party. The word 'Rebel' and 'Traitor' was often used quite liberally in reference to George Crawley from the radical's meeting basements of White Chapel, feasting halls of Eton, to the club rooms at Cambridge and Oxford, and even to the private rooms of Buckingham Palace itself.

To their minds the Blue Bonnets had truly crossed over the border upon the young Lord of Downton returned with a rebel army to take back his home.

Suddenly, in the boy's vivid display of apathy to their traditions and mindsets, all the plans that so many titled peers had for Sybbie and Downton Abbey, a robust agricultural powerhouse, supported by a very profitable motor company brand, was sank overnight. This cowboy, straight out of the pages of "The Sketch", was now destined to take control of a board long cultivated by scheming Gentry. It seemed an odd business considering the first time the mortified shocks came across their faces when in a Grantham drawing room or at a luncheon.

They were taken aback when George Crawley walked into a room and casually, without even acknowledging anyone, gave a cheeky pop to an unsuspecting Lady Mary's tight silky hind end in passing. To this, the woman would only scowl as she watched him engage his Uncle Tom or Grandfather about some matter important enough to bring him out of seclusion at Crawley House. The cheeky clap to his mama's bum had become a thing of tradition no matter whom was there, where they were, and what the woman had been doing. The off-kilter disrespect of the inappropriately bawdy action seemed unconscionable to the Peers when considering that Lady Mary Crawley was the class of many a ballroom and dinner table of London. And some found it humiliatingly crass that George would so openly flaunt a seeming ownership over Lady Mary, being his prisoner or not.

The self-made businesswoman and debutante had become the beautiful and impeccable authority on all things fashion and style. Lady Mary was simply a cornerstone of society. It had been why George's odd and contentious relationship with his mama was hard to fathom to the many that would kill to have her as their friend, much less their own mother. Yet, not only were the two cold as ice to one another, but were constantly sniping and insulting. If George had come across Lady Mary as she was doing something, the boy was content to jovially knock, smack, or tip the thing over, and leave her to clean it up with a look of near rage in her eyes. Other times if Lady Mary was sitting in the library for tea and George had come to collect a book or Ms. Sybbie, he'd casually flop down on the sofa and lay his head in her lap. She'd glare over her tea, watching her only child snore obnoxiously in pretending to nap as if she was simply some lounging pillow, knowing her annoyance of physical contact or familiarity without purpose.

There were also times when Mary would go up to ready herself for sleep and find a fully dressed George stretched out on her bed, Outback Fedora over his eyes, hands behind his head slothfully. To which Mary would spitefully allow Anna to undress her from her evening gown. Then, standing in her silky bra and knickers, facetiously, she'd ask her son to schedule his inspections, that way she'd make a rather more exciting pick of lingerie for him. To this, George, blindly, scoffed, saying that if he was after a good striptease, he would go seek out his Aunt Edith, The Marchioness having the much better body of the two sisters. The admission only needled Lady Mary to a hard red blush of irritation and insult that a smugly smirking George knew was there, even if he couldn't see it with brim covered and closed eyes. Then, finally in her liquid satin nightgown, she'd slip under the covers and lay next to George awkwardly, defiantly annoyed as she stared at the youth who gave her no acknowledgement as they lay in the quiet darkness next to one another. But in the morning, it was as if he had never been there at all. She hated those mornings, for she could never resist the stinging sadness in his disappearance as she touched his long-cooled imprint on her silk bedspread.

The truth was that, having been raised by the standards of Lady Violet, her granny, Mary had come to expect certain things of the world, especially of her children. She was raised and brought up with the only physical contact being a peck on the cheek with the hold of her hands, as intimate a touch by her parents as a kiss on the forehead or the rare hug in moments of extreme distress. And she expected, demanded, the same detachment that her granny had raised her to rely upon. Instead, George and Sybbie were quite the opposite of anything she ever wanted.

They were both incredibly physical in their relationship with Mary, whether she liked it or not. George, in particular, got a kick out of 'manhandling' his mama in various ways. Whether it was pillowing his head on her lap, smacking her bum cheekily in greeting when he entered a room while her back was turned. Or worst … there was never a more mortifying moment for a debutante, a lady of high class, as when she was torn from the staircase by her children and was forced to endure such indignities.

All she had done, in light of one of George's biting sarcastic comments toward some very valued guests, was apologize for the boy's 'lack of civilization'. Then, with smug smirks, she saw both George and Sybbie give each other side eye in slight of her 'horrendous' snobby tone. Then, without warning, they turned, pulling Mary off the stairs, and onto the floor. There, George held her against him while Sybbie drummed and blew raspberries on their mama's belly. Meanwhile, George messed up her newly styled hair with the grinding of his knuckles. The commotion attracted Lady Grantham who tried hard not to laugh at the sight of her eldest child, cold and prim to a fault, now squirming to get free of her children who she was forced to 'rough house' with in front of the entire passing luncheon party.

Finally, it had been the stern voice of a shocked and outraged Lord Grantham that had put an end to the whole episode, after Tom's attempt to break up the ganging up on Lady Mary resulted in himself being tackled and dragged to the rug by his giggling daughter. The pallid ice princess of High Street was enraged and furious as she struggled to her feet, completely humiliated by her own children in such a completely undignified manner. She was rancorous as George laughed hard and uncontrollably at the way she looked, still lounging on the rug in front of the staircase.

Furiously, Lady Mary wished to excuse herself, but couldn't, because, Luncheon was already served. She was forced to walk into the small dining room and eat as frazzled, blushed, and thrown about as if she had gone hiking on a rather arid and windy day. She could only seethe across the table as George, completely uncaring of his common appearance, pushed in for "a plate or two" at the high class lunch, just to see Mary's humiliation. Later, he ignored the chastisement of his grandparents, as he and Sybbie left for Crawley House, sarcastically agreeing of 'how awful it was that children actually did stuff with their mother'. Afterward, when word got out of such a thing as children wrestling with their mama, and the greater sin of teenagers wrestling with Lady Mary, of all people, there was nothing but condemnation of George Crawley for such heresy against their goddess.

More frustrating still was that for some reason Lady Mary, despite given so many chances, outright refused to even speak of disinheritance. It seemed a sure bet that the queen of London Fashion Week would surely name Sybil Branson as her heiress and full recipient of her parent's motor company, by naming her sole beneficiary of her ex-husband's partnership with Tom Branson. But to even these schemes and influences of such, the woman out right refused. It baffled many that in a relationship so angry and toxic that Lady Mary still maintained that her son George was her sole and only heir to all of her assets. No one could see why, nor did it make any sense. He had marched an army from the Scottish Highlands, brought bloody battle to her fields and moors, humiliated her on her own wedding day. He had took her prisoner, stripped her of her title, her family estate, and her beloved Matthew's shares. He had kept her as his personal captive in Crawley House for months! Doing god knows what to his 'hated' mama! Yet, no one could get a word edge wise. Fore Mary would hear none of it.

When pushed as to why he remained his mama's sole heir of everything, George would only feign ignorance, then scoff that if it was the case than he should run up and 'stake Dracula's bride with a Holly branch' before she changes her mind. But quietly it seemed to be something that bothered even him as well. And there were some who speculated that perhaps, something did happen in the privacy of Crawley House in those months of captivity. Or better yet, it was pondered …

Perhaps the beautiful and cold Lady Mary rather found contentment as her son's captive.

But the main problem for everyone else by five months into George's return was the jockeying of what was left of their grannies and mama's schemes. Though, they did not stand to gain the full weight of assets that the Crawley family controlled, such as the Downton Estate or all of the motor company. There were still a bounty of prizes worth the time of dozens of strapping and collegian young men to be found at Downton Abbey. If it was not enough that not only were Sybbie, "The Star of the County Grantham", and Marigold, the main attraction of the Metropolitan Stage, were considered two of the most beautiful young women in the whole of the Imperium. But Ms. Branson held stock in her parent's motor company, as well as being her father's heiress in his controlling interest. And Ms. Marigold, though illegitimate, was a social jewel as the lead Prima Ballerina of the most famous ballet company in the world and was the sole heiress of The Marchioness Lady Hexham's literary empire. It was a fortune built from the 'female empowering' magazine "The Sketch", and a string of mega-popular young adult novels of a character based on Marigold herself, beloved around the world by many a young girl. As such, the man that could make the gliding angel- whose feet built the metropolitan Stage - or the mechanical genius with the face of a fairytale princess, fall for him would not only give him a lifetime of social points. But he'd also gain quite the income upon the deaths of Lady Edith Pelham or Tom Branson.

With the endless waves of young handsome chaps that besieged Downton week to week, there was a never ending shot of youth and vigor in the manor house's halls. Both girls, best friends - sisters really - couldn't help but love all the attention. The potential of the fun found in the grandeur of a countryside summer was inescapable to their fiery young hearts. Even more excited were the girl's mamas and aunts, who were overjoyed to see their daughters - who had been bullied in their past for parts of their paternity - now so caught up in the romanticism of girlhood intrigue and first love in the backdrop of country color in bloom. And the girls, together, had never once kept it a secret. Tucked between her cousins, Viki Aldridge slept much of that summer with a soft smile on her face in hearing of such whimsical romantic tales told in bed by a giggly Sybbie and Marigold.

Even Lord Grantham felt a certain pride in such care and love loran longing of dashing chaps after his much beloved granddaughters. To have his drawing room and library teeming with young men of breeding talking of racing, sports, and the like, had him grinning like a devil. He cherished each young man waiting on the Earl of Grantham, hand and foot, for a chance to talk or to seek the council of some advice from such a great lord. Lady Grantham smirked in bed watching her husband always climbing under the covers with a smile on his face from the evening. He admitted that even he felt rather young again, or much as he did when they first met, with all the chaps from Eton and Oxford in his halls, chasing beautiful girls.

But, while Lady Grantham allowed him to have it, she only felt melancholy. It was unsaid, but clearly felt that Robert was getting a charge from the young suitors, because, for once, he had something in common with a young man in his life. For the boy of their own had nothing in common or to discuss with his grandfather that didn't start with tension and end with a near shoving match. And in the dark, as Robert informed her of all the boys' schemes to hook Sybbie here and whisk Marigold there. Lady Cora mourned for the life that their boy could've had, if they had all been just a bit stronger and fought harder rather than helping a badly wounded young boy on a pirates clockwork vessel all those years ago when Prince Edward sent his mercenaries after him.

But eventually, at least in the summer of 1936, the many great romantic dalliances dissolved into nothing. Fore, eventually, and quite unwantedly by him, in the end …

All roads led to George Crawley.

In most cases the young adventurer was not the one to blame for this, as much as it was his cousins. The boy was, after all, a major part of Sybbie's life. While all the youthful romanticism was happening at Downton, the laughing kisses in the sweet summer rain when the party of young aristocrats was drenched suddenly at local barn party of jig and drink. The oars and umbrella of a row boat down the picturesque country creeks. And the throwing rocks at windows to sneak out into the garden at night for private snogs. George was completely uninterested in their goings on.

The boy had loved fully once, without lent or hindrance. But he had lost her forever, lost her to an aunt's secret that destroyed his entire universe. Since then, unable to piece together shattered dreams of "Happily Ever After", the boy chose seclusion from all reminders of what was and yet could have never been. Many a night had at Downton with laughter and lively conversation of youthful ambition and love, was a brooding shadow at Crawley House. There a regretful figure sat in Matthew's armchair, puffing clouds of blue smoke from a pipe with strange ancient runes carved upon it, while watching the flames in the fireplace dance as if they were a ballerina he once dreamed of in his darkest nights.

Some days, catching the groups of his peers with the girls he loved, laughing loudly, chasing each other through the woods and down the village streets energetically, only darkened the shadow of his broken heart. Many times, they'd wave from afar at the dashing and brooding figure across the street. But the youth would only walk away with hands in his old leather jacket pockets without acknowledging them.

In the meantime he did anything to distract from the shattered and completely changed world he found himself return too. George Crawley, in those days, could often be found in the fields with the tenants, keeping the Estate at bay. He would moonlight work at Electrical plants and steel mills. Then, in the nights he could be found in the back alley and industrial warehouses of London, bare-knuckle prize fighting against thuggish and brutish men twice his age and thrice his size. And always was he against the German Cultural Ministry, on the hunt for _**"The Grail of Prague".**_

George did everything in his power to forget his once lofty dreams that had now drifted into ether like his smoke rings in the dark. Nor had he the heart to see one whom he had loved since he could remember in the arms of another. But while the boy himself, and his intentions, were to stay as far as he could from the joy of those he loved, as to not ruin anything. In the end, his reputation and legend of many great battles, daring duels, and high adventures in far off places haunted all the countryside romance happening at Downton Abbey. One could start a stop watch on when, eventually, the dashing young lovers of Downton's roses would enquire of George "The Comet" Crawley. Then, it was only a matter of time till the question consumed everything.

It usually, for Sybbie, started on weekends. From Friday nights all the way to Monday mornings, she spent them all with George at Crawley House or wherever he went in those days. And every weekday morning, like clockwork, even at a full house of suitors, the girl walked down in her nightgown with a bag to the house by the church where she'd eat breakfast, shower, and dress there. Every boyfriend, eager to see the county's crowned princess, saving her a seat and plate at the breakfast table, was always informed by Lord Grantham of his granddaughter's ritual. The constant and consistent snubbing by Sybbie, in favor of maintaining her very close relationship with George, laced many a young man with all the growing sour moods of young love's violent seas of mistrust and jealousy.

For Marigold, it was the distance of her thoughts some nights, and her moods of deep melancholy and depression in moments when she was shown great adoration and love by her courtier. She could never say, and would never say, what darkened her tender heart. But every person wishing to capture the picture of an Arthurian Lady all noticed the longing looks given to Crawley House in their passing. Or the heart stopping pauses when she caught sight of George out and about on business in the village or with his best friends from New Orleans and Sybbie, laughing and palling around in London. Then, they'd see the glassy and deep pain in her emerald eyes, and they'd know …

And it drove many a young chap insane.

But mostly it was the stories, the tales of adventure, of dastardly villains and mighty heroics in places with strange names and landscapes unbelieved and fierce. In these fanciful stories of far off, swashbuckling, high adventure in Depression stricken America and other places unspoken in this tale there came a turn of intense competitiveness from the lads, a time-honored impulse that bled green in envy by every young buck in the forest.

The confrontations were never overt, but planned, schemed, sometimes by their mama's or grannies. They were invitations to societal activities that required athletic prowess of some sort. They were Point-to-Points, Archery, fencing … and many other competitions that were planned to be sprung on their guest. Yet, they could never comprehend the level of disinterest that George Crawley had for such things as Richard Ellis and Ethel Parks, his Butler and Housekeeper, read to him while they ate at the kitchen table together. He had no interest in 'triple dates', or 'tagging along', with Sybbie, Marigold, and their army of suitors.

The boy had grown up around hard men, poor and gritty, who found delight in simple things. In a childhood that had only known plenty of danger and daring, going to an archery meet at a societal garden party was not his idea of "a good goddamn time". Most of these things were declined with a simple "Not on your life" over the phone to Lady Grantham who relayed the invites through notes to Ethel and Ellis when they would walk up to Downton with Sybbie's laundry.

George Crawley had taken a great pride, and shown it, in not caring what other people thought of him. But for all of the boy's apathy for the standards of others, there were people in his family that did care what other people thought of him. If George had been told that, he'd leave no doubt that it was true. Yet, he could never have guessed that one of those people was Tom Branson himself. It would be easy to say that Robert Crawley, particularly, cared what people thought of his Grandson and heir, based solely on the reputation of his family. But one could hardly put serious money that his Uncle Tom was on his case of reputation and pride in the matters of the summer of '36.

Fore, in George's many refusals to call on invitations out with Sybbie, Marigold, and their friends, there was a growing concurrence among some of the chaps at the Downton dinner table that called into question the boy's valor, if not the very truth of the stories told. Tom, knowing the truth of his nephew's many abilities and shows of incredible valiantry - having been rescued personally by his nephew in Mexico. The man took umbrage with such slanderous taunts of his daughter and niece's suitors.

But George never saw the need to defend himself from those who just didn't know what they were talking about. But when Tom Branson went to confront his nephew - who was clearing a quarter with scythe in hand - George simply stared blankly at his uncle. After imploring his nephew to take up the gauntlet and prove the arrogant prigs wrong, the youth just stared at the Irishman for a long moment as if he had lost his 'damned' mind. Then, without answer, George wiped his forehead with the back of his work glove and continued his scything with a shake of his head in disbelief, muttering bitterly of his want for a new family.

The awful truth was that one could chalk it up to a feeling of threat from the youth whose deeds were predicated on feats of daring and boldness that were near impossible to replicate. And Jonah Robinson knew exactly what it was which bothered other young men about George, always had, no matter what country they were in. But it became a common problem when he returned to Downton, especially from the upper class and collegian chaps in pursuit of the wealth of beauty and finery of the women of the House of Grantham. They were all athletic, sculpted from marble, and had a dash to them that caught Sybbie, Marigold, and even their own mamas quite guilty eyes. But no matter how bold they were, how hard they pushed their physical competition, none of them could replicate the severity or gallant valiantry of George Crawley. Or as Richard Ellis put it to everyone downstairs … "The lads couldn't 'out crazy' the Cap'n." When it came down to physical and mental prowess in feats of audacity and sheer daring, they all ran a distant second to the Heir of Downton. It embittered the many suitors chasing after Sybbie and Marigold, causing them to make quite the fools of themselves trying to challenge George to competitions the youth had no interest in.

The fact was that their limitations, and the lack of George's, came from upbringing and environments. The young Crawley hero was who he was, because, he had to be. When one's friends were about to be murdered by a demon of the ancient world, or when you're about to be ridden down by Ku Klux Klan members on horseback, or in a gunfight with Mexican Pistoleros, you learn a certain 'Do or Die' mentality. You learn to take risks to get to the next risk, push one's own self in order to achieve the seeming improbable, because, there was no alternative. And once you learn to live that way, as George had, there was no going back or dialing down that instinct.

Every chap that came through Downton with Marigold on his arm, off to pursue Sybbie, looked near Olympian. They were charming to the women of the Crawley family, the models of the purest gentlemen at lavished dinner party of such finery and had won the heart of Lord Grantham, in the least. But in the end, they would never be what George was, because, they were lucky. And if they hadn't been such competitive tossers, mad with lust and envy for the girls of Downton, then they'd be very grateful, indeed, to know that their combined experiences of life would never breed a desperate prowess that could ever 'out crazy' George Crawley. Fore to be "The Comet" one must look to a horror unimagined and bear heavily a sorrow to deathly weariness.

Of course, being George's oldest friend and companion from their very first meeting on the snowy November streets of Manhattan in '30, Jonah knew that there wasn't a brain among the five of them gathered around Sybbie tonight, making veiled comments of insult of his friend. The young owner of the very popular night club "The Runaway" knew that it was all bravado. They simply didn't know - these titled young men in their private schools of Eton and Harrow.

They had no idea what was out there.

They didn't know what it takes to be the kind of person that he had to be, that George was, what was inside someone to live through what they had. So after speaking, not truth, but fact, he continued to whittle. He didn't want to take it any further, knowing that he, as well as George, did not like to talk about what happened in the past. But from the silence he knew that there would be no getting around it. So, quietly, he looked up when he was asked, mockingly, what he meant by George Crawley having a 'demon' living inside him.

The young man corrected, it wasn't inside, no sir, he said that George Crawley had a demon living in his past. Riding in the backseat while he's driving, and every time he checks the rear-view mirror, he sees _her_ there staring back at him. To this there was an uneasy chuckle that came from the crowded drawing room. He had a humoring look on his handsome face as he slowly looked around at what everyone assumed was a joke. Using 'she' in terms of this "fearsome" demon in George Crawley's past.

He took a deep, simmering, umbrage to the idea that they thought he was joking. That if he was young, black, and in Lord and Lady Grantham's drawing room - friend of Ms. Sybbie and Marigold - it must mean that he was their court jester. They thought him some simple Black American clown spouting out 'Monkey Shines', invited tonight for their amusement. But he let them laugh. He let them go just to the cusp of getting back to their conversations, before he continued casually. Then, humorously at first, he began to tell the group of such "hard" young peers a story.

It was a good one too …

Her name was Lillian Bordeaux. Her mama named her that, because that was what she was drunk on when her daddy ran out on his bill. See, sometimes when you run out on a whore in New Orleans, they don't put what you left behind in the "lost and found" box - at least not usually. But there was quite a few 'donations' to the church left squealing and crying on the steps. But this girl's mother, she wasn't some poor whore bumming off a few drinks from an unhappy farmer or lonely bayou shrimper in her momma's ratty Flapper silks. Lillian's mama was one of those 'Painted Ladies', higher class than some of the folk even in the very room where the story was being told.

They were courtesans, hosts, escorts, but the word "whore" was never spoken, even if the service they provided was the same. But these women were the kind of girls photographed on the arms of the most important congressmen, senators, and millionaires throughout the South. Most of them good Southern Belles were nothing but cordial and sweet to them. But every Sunday they prayed that those beautiful and refined women have the strength to endure being eternally chewed by the great beast at the very center of fire and damnation.

But Lillian Bordeaux was special, because, she wasn't supposed to exist. It was the one rule of their business, their life blood, and that was discretion. It was considered in poor taste, sacrilege, for the women to hold any leverage against their clients. Or they'd all feel the wrath of the local government who tolerated their existence … barely. As long as the boys down in Baton Rouge got a discount on special occasions, or the use of their favorite girl whenever they were in town, they'd let the whole thing slide. But the seeming epitome of 'blackmail', or the threat of it by classy woman or even sharp eyed enemy, was to have a little girl running around the most affluent streets of New Orleans with the face, the eyes, and the mannerisms of one so highly placed in Southern Society.

Yet, her momma would not go to 'Granny Cottonmouth' in the backstreets of the French Quarter to get her "Special Potion". All the girls were nervous and unsure about her decision, yet, they stood by their friend, growing heavier with child. Yet, the madam could do nothing for it either. Her own child, of clearly mixed race, which she placed at the foot of the Catholic Church, was now unbeknownst asking her own momma to spare the baby in her belly, which she loved so much already. Feeling that she had already let down a daughter that had unknowingly followed her into this dark world, the house madam could not take from her a child, nor order the death of her own granddaughter. Both mother and unknown grandmother cried tears upon holding that fine baby girl five months later. The momma, because, her baby was born as lily white as the governor's daughters themselves, ensuring that she would never know the cruelty that her mixed-race momma had all of her life. And the grandmother cried, because, she got to hold her own blood in her arms for the first time, whether the baby's mother knew it or not.

For the next twelve years, Lillian grew up under the protection of a group of refined but hard women. From their tutelage there was not a finer jewel in all of New Orleans. Everyone who met the girl loved her. She was generous, compassionate, and had so much heart. She had learned it while growing up in a home filled with such lovely women that hid their shame and guilt of what led them to this life of glamour, secrets, and scars from clients with such dark instincts in the throes of sin with creatures so fine. But in the night, lying next to them in bed after a client left or in the shared bubbly tub, she heard all their stories and confessions. And when they were over, "Baby Girl" was always good for a hug, a kiss, and a cuddle. Their tales and the sorrow in them, made her love even harder, and they responded in kind with a deep attachment to a girl too dangerous to exist, and yet too pure to turn away.

But as she got older, and the admiration for the charms she possessed grew, so did the recognition of her likeness to the long time Senator. He was a man, powerful in the Democratic Caucasus in Washington, who had his eye on governorship. He had fled home in order to guard against J. Edgar Hoover looking into his part as a local leader of a certain secret society that burned crosses and bombed Catholic Churches. And it was by ill chance that both Lillian and her momma ran into this man at the Woolworths that sat across the street of his brand-new election campaign office. The senator knew, with just one glance, the specter of death coming for his political career that was standing by the sweets counter. He knew who she was, the girl with nut brown ringlets and white bow, smiling with his beloved mother's face at the charming young tween clerk who always had some turn of phrase on the mind to make her giggle.

Lillian had made a frightened noise as her caramel kettle corn spilled on the floor when the old man snatched her by her arm, unable to control the anger and outrage of her sheer existence. She cried for her momma, but when the woman, diplomatically, came to defuse the situation, he slapped her with a loud and humiliating smack that sent the classiest of women to the floor. All he could do was shake the life out of the girl again and again, nothing but hate in his soul for one who was supposed to have been washed or scraped out in blood from between her mother's legs.

He might have done more in his dangerous tantrum, if the young clerk of Lillian's age hadn't taken a broom and jabbed the handle between the old man's legs from behind. He let out a canine like yelp at the aggressive stab at his testicles. He threw the sobbing little girl to the ground, but when he reached for the clerk, he was quickly repulsed with painful raps to his knuckles by the clerk that wielded the broom like an _expert_ _swordsman_.

Finally, having been stabbed in the gut and balls several times, he caught the handle. With a hard yank, the senator pulled the clerk forward, grabbing him by his work apron. But he grew angrier when the boy quickly snatched him by his own collar, twisting it fiercely in a death grip of stone the was far stronger than would be expected from one so young. Both raised their fists to strike each other, till the flash bulb of a reporter's camera stopped them. Slowly, filled with hate, the old man released the clerk, who pushed the old politician off him with aggression in front of a growing crowd of onlookers.

The boy helped the girl up, standing in front of her protectively, while the old man took a long moment to give an incredibly charming campaign speech about 'the community' working together to raise the children with good values. But when he walked up to give a showy lecture of pure honey to the girl huddled fearfully against the back of the clerk, the boy stopped the old man offering her back her kettle corn. He called the old politician a "Cracker Ass Honkey" to a tide of laughter from the pool of reporters, and told him to 'keep stepin', motioning to the door. There had been a black hole of sheer rage hidden in the old man's eyes that made his bastard daughter flinch, but the clerk was unmovable, hard as nails, staring him down coldly. When he finally left it, there was a practiced smile as he invited the press to come see his new campaign office. But not before matching eyes with the young clerk, giving an audible crunch of the young girl's sweet kettle corn.

The incident was in the paper and on the radio. The girls of the balconied building right there in the center of the Cultural District, began to worry. It would get ugly. The police, the sheriff, maybe even the State Troopers would come. And lord only knew what would happen then. But instead, they were approached by a shadowy figure in the night. No one ever saw his face, nor knew his name. But they had heard of him, had heard him on random stations of the local New Orleans radio in the middle of the night. He was always preaching, sermonizing about things that didn't seem 'Christian' to anyone, and yet, they liked the sounds his words made, like lathering honey down your insides. The stuff he said on those nights, it seemed to make 'hella sense' in such a dark and hard Depression the poor were losing to every month. This 'Preacher' told the madam of the mighty power of the Senator's anger at the ladies. He was looking to round up his boys in white hoods and sheets to pay them a visit. But the women didn't have to worry, that he could convince the senator - a member of his congregation - his anger should not be against anyone but himself and his sins … but only for a price.

He wanted the girl for one night.

Her momma fell to the floor in sobs when she heard that the madam agreed. She was a girl, only twelve years old, it wasn't right. It ain't fittin, she had sobbed. It just wasn't fitting for her girl, their girl, not their baby girl. Most of the women there had been Lillian's age when they were first touched in _that way_. Usually it came from a curious male cousin in age with them, a drunken uncle, or simply for coin to eat for the night. But they all couldn't stand the thought of selling their little girl's sweetness, her innocence, just to protect their own lives.

But the madam, cold as ice, soul dying, knew that Lillian would survive it. The girls that bore her blood were strong enough to survive anything. Then, when the time was right, they'd take all their money and send her somewhere far away, somewhere where no one could harm her again. That night they all snuggled to Lillian, lying next to and around her, touching her, petting her, kissing her. The girl felt so sad, not for herself, but for all of them.

A few days later, in the sweltering evening, men came to collect Lillian. They wore white robes and carried candles. About their necks were replicas of some religious symbol that had been popping up all over the city in the past few years, ever since poor _**Mrs. Martha Levinson**_ had been murdered up at old Amantha Mansion outside of town a month after the Stock Market crashed. It was that of a tall tree, with a single eye of slit pupil, wreathed in flame, among the bare limbs. It was of a design seen only in ancient drawings found in Darkest Africa, and in carvings etched in the evil ruins of vine covered temples of the _"Hyborian Age"._

The women, grudgingly, met the demands of this 'preacher' who requested that the girl be dressed in her finest communal dress, and her head dawned with a matching lace veil. When these acolytes collected her, they placed her on a white steed they brought with them. They had chosen their moment wisely, as a city-wide festival was on the cusp, and as they walked down the street, they paraded her beautiful virgin visage to the backdrop of sparklers and fireworks over Bourbon Street. To their appearance there was many a host of cheers and clapping from onlookers, mostly drunks, playboys, and party girls. No one did a thing to stop them. Most not even knowing what horror they were cheering for as the girl's mount was led by to thunderous and jovial applause that kept in spirit with the strange, absurd, and certainly supernatural character of one of the oldest cities in the New World.

They walked her so far down winding and abandoned streets that she had lost all sense of direction, realizing that her senses were being assailed by the fumes burning from the candles they carried. Eventually, they arrived, through a back street of dirt and forest path to a large forgotten Victorian mansion, off the beaten path. It was tall, rotted, and its yard over grown. All around, hidden and lying in the tall grass, were abandoned children's toys. They were pretty little dollies with eyes poked out, abandoned kites, and smashed rocking horses. Everything about the house was certainly a thing that resided within a young girl's nightmares, certainly in the noises that the creaking and whistling mansion made in the heat of the night. There, they led the horse past the broken and ruined picket gate to where a girl looked in fright at what awaited her. Fore in the doorway was a tall and imposing figure lit by Tiki torches and shadowed by distant fireworks.

Standing in the yard of tall grass and broken children's toys were dozens of figures in tall pointed hoods and sheeted robes of white that they wore over polyester trousers. They sang a low moaning song in a bass and trembling harmony as they led the girl over the overgrown walkway toward the front porch. There stood two men. The one in the back wore the silk red robes and tall hood of "The Grand Wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan. He was leading his 'brothers' in a slow and haunting hymnal that didn't sound anything godly to the girl. But, surely, the most frightening thing that the girl ever saw was right in front of her …

[ _("O'Death" – Ralph Stanley)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehFINQKctq0)

Waiting for her in front of the house stood a … no, not a man, it wasn't a man by any recollection of God's own creation. It remained a tall figure, practically statuesque in the veiled moonlight and shadowed neon of exploding colors in the distant sky. The thing, the being of some sort, did not flinch an inch. He wore dark, dark, robes that were stained. Some said that they were white once, but that he had dipped them in the blood of his heathen sacrifices for so long that they remained stiff in a deep dark crimson. He was humbled, a man of charity, for his cloth seemed poor, worn down to threadbare and the clinging sweat soaked material in the Southern Louisiana night said that he wore nothing underneath.

But the most frightening thing of this large and imposing figure wasn't his height, or the strange stillness in his posture. It was the adornments that decorated him. It began with the great golden, jet, and ruby talisman that he wore about his neck. The scorpion of Jet, lined and accented in gold, with two piercing ruby eyes, looked and felt truly ancient. Carried from Darkest Africa to the Caribbean where plenty of slavers, then plantation owners, and finally slaves themselves, became open to its power and, one by one, fell into its bloody jaws of darkness. To what magic the seemingly living item held, the girl knew not, nor did she ever wish to see the power it commanded. But worst of all the things this frightening sorcerer wore …

It was his mask.

Cut from the Nubian Tree of the ancient Serengeti - feeding off the blood of a thousand generations of tribesmen that had watered the man-eater. It was crafted from the root of all evil in men by a powerful sorcerer supreme from an age undreamed in the pre-history of man's many forgotten myths and legends of a world changed. Though long defeated, destroyed from the very face of the world, the dark phantom of its master lived ever in the ceremonial mask that escaped the sunken ruins of a dark temple on a lost continent. The mask was ever weeping deep red viscous from unseen pours. Stained red, the rest of its color came from the chipped paint of purple and green that clung still to the carved reptilian scales that collected and diverted the weeping blood like Venetian waterways. Slowly they dripped down the many spiked trim of the mask, which accented the horned rims that stuck out just above the brows. But the most frightening detail remained the eye slits. For in a mask so detailed, it was what was missing that made it most terrifying of all. And that was, though, it was worn upon a face. To look into the open eyes slits, one could see absolutely nothing. Not iris, not whites, or even the outline of a person's eyes. The slits were as empty and dark as if there was no one at all which adorned the abomination.

In the human senses, in our knowledge of right and wrong, it is never truly known, or if so, it is hotly debated, what the equivalency of evil was. The long and drawn out arguments of if humans were ultimately good or if they were untrustworthy beings, could and would be had for many long years ever after all of us are dust. But that night, in the shadow of dead things, in the yard filled with items of rotted innocence, no debate was needed. Fore evil was and would remain at the very sight of such a creature, an escaped minion of hell, if not the very progeny of Satan himself.

Suddenly, the story stopped for a moment. And then, as if on cue, for dramatic effect, a roll of thunder smashed through the hollow halls of Grantham House. Everyone jumped suddenly, not seeing it coming, when all of them were engrossed in a story that was too horrible, strange, and frightening to stop. It was known by now that, whatever point Jonah was getting too, he was going to get there regardless of if Lord and Lady Grantham wanted him too or not.

But in the summer night of 1933 in the forgotten places of New Orleans, the City of the Dead, a young girl let loose her bladder on the back of a white horse. She wept at the fear and the humiliation of such an undignified feeling of urine running down her legs- a girl raised and tutored by the very class of the old city. It seemed an odd reaction, but so very human in light of everything around her. But the masked figure only consoled her, touching the wetted skirts, and petted her paternally. Then, slowly, he lifted her, effortlessly, off the horse and collected her in his arms. Suddenly, so close to him, she felt a sickness, a dizzying faintness that had come over her. Her senses were assaulted by flashes of sights, loud chattering noises, and foul demonic voices of a thousand generations clamoring in her ears and in her mind. It overwhelmed her with the mask, its dark eyes of endless abyss, watching her unwaveringly just inches from her own face. Then, with a little whimpered shutter, the girl was carried like a new bride through the threshold of the screeching and cracking mansion doors.

After a few minutes of quiet, The Grand Wizard watched in puzzlement as two of his men began climbing under the house with long chains and hooking them to the rotted foundations. When he questioned them about why they were, now, attaching those chains to two pickup trucks, the large and tall young men replied, humbly, that the 'Preacher' told them to do it. Though suspicious, the leader of the Klansmen did not question it. For now, the power that this "Voodoo Priest" had was helping him, but in the end, once he got what was promised, he was going to put a stop to all of this heathen nonsense.

Other hooded and robed figures helped the two other "Klansmen" with the task of setting up to collapse the mansion once the 'deed' was done.

Meanwhile, the senior most of the acolytes strolled the overgrown yard, hearing the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets, and the rustle of rodents from the forested outskirts into the tall grass. He had yet to realize that he had gone too far from the rest of the party while following what he thought was a darting figure. He thought it too big to be an animal, moving from the trees and into the yard at a swift lit. For a long few moments he wandered to the side of the house, almost out of sight from the crowded front yard. However, his draw was set upon the third floor overlook, where a frightened scream of a young girl echoed hollowly through the thick evergreen ringed property. Suddenly, as a chill slithered down his spine, and a flash of fear went through his heart at the sound the girl made, something sprang up right at his feet. It was a shorter figure that moved like lightning on the cultist. With a hard snap of a fist, the acolyte hacked and choked silently when his throat was paralyzed by a hard jab in ambush. Then, in a head rush of pain, he felt someone dislocate his knee joint with another strike. With a wrap of their smaller leg around his undamaged one, he was swept and rolled into the tall grass. A shadowy figure fell upon him with brutal punches, their thuds covered by the night noises and distance from the front yard.

When the customary glance of a curious Klansman passed without event or notice of the missing cultist, the shadowy figure glanced up from the tops of the blades. A young boy of age with Lillian had covered his face in black shoe polish to camouflage him to the night. His head was covered by a black headscarf that was pinned in the style of a _British War Nurse_. He wore a double breasted moleskin coat and denim trousers that were absolutely brutal in the muggy night, but it gave an extra layer of protection from the elements of the Louisiana bayou bush. Sweltering in a full buttoned coat, the young rebel wiped his absolutely soaked brow, before he turned behind him and began to give bird sounds to the woods.

A Blue Bird replied.

From their station at the front of the rundown mansion, the Klansmen and cultists frowned at the out of season and time of day bird calls. They began to look around, a slow sinking in their guts. They felt it coming. It started with a low thumping of a bass drum from somewhere in the pitch black tree line. Slowly, the drumming got louder and louder, till it was joined with an angry clattering and slamming of instruments and tools together to create a deafening wall of sound in the night. Then, when it was at its peak noise, the first human noise was let loose. It was vicious and terrifying war cry of pure aggression and violence that no Klansmen had ever heard before. suddenly, more and more voices joined the adrenaline filled chanting, caterwauling, whooping, and wild American Indian ululating.

The heathen noises that the demons gave seemed almost inhuman as the branches of the tree line shook wildly. It was a mixture of adrenaline, fear, aggression, and rage all wrapped up in a violent hate for even the very smell of the Ku Klux Klan's robes. Eyes wide behind pointed hoods, the men slowly backing away from the sheer echoing noises that enveloped them, sending corkscrewing sensation down their spines. Quickly, the Grand Wizard, a veteran of France, shouted for his men to stay together. He knew, and wasn't surprised, that one of those 'damn whores' was friends with the Guerrilla band of outlaws that they had been chasing with no success and mounting casualties since January.

They must have tipped them off of to the bargain the Madam made with the Preacher.

But it was when the first sound of objects in the dark. They cut through the air, landing at their feet with hard stabbing noises into the soil and flicking through the tall grass. That was when the breaking of the morale started. They couldn't make out what it was that was swishing and zipping by their ears, landing sharply by their feet. That was till the first moment that the man next to them let out a howl. Then, they saw the silhouette of an arrow shaft sticking out from his chest. Suddenly, in the swishing and sharp rattle of flying objects landing all around them, they realized that the 'savages' were firing "Night Arrows" at them. The muzzle flash of rifles, pistols, and shotguns could be seen and tracked in the dark. They held fast, those carrying ceremonial shields with the Klan insignia held it high as arrow heads plunked two or three shafts thick on their surface. But when the first four of their numbers fell, shafts through the throat, abdomen, and head, they all fell back into the mansion that had been forbidden to be step inside while the Preacher observed his ceremony.

Meanwhile those who didn't flee to the ruins ran for the trucks they drove in on. But just as they reached them, the two Klansmen that had started the project of attaching chains to the mansions foundations, removed their hoods. They revealed themselves to be just a couple of boys, teenagers, that had the wrong skin color for the robes they wore. The shock and confusion of the contradiction caused the others to pause in disbelief. The first Klansman got buckshot from his own double barrel shotgun taken from the rifle rack in his pick-up. He was hit right in the face from one of the teenagers. With darkness shadowing their faces, both boys peppered down the Klansmen trying to get to the trucks. Taking the lords name in vain, the other Klansmen forgot all brotherhood in sight of the bloody crossfire of Longbow arrows and buckshot and stampeded into the mansion where they locked themselves inside.

They attempted to return fire - with what few guns they had on them left - at the tree line. Expertly aimed archers were dropping shafts through the broken windows. Their targets were the cultists whose flaming eye in tree talismans could be seen easily in the shadowed ruins, and Klansmen whose muzzle flashes could be tracked. But while the overall plan to subdue the larger force was working, the main objective was still in issue while Lillian remained helplessly at the mercy of the sorcerer at the top floor.

Suddenly, in Grantham House, the story stopped as a gleam of nostalgia came over Jonah Robinson. There was just the tiniest smirk on his face, nodding as if it was all happening right in front of him again. He scoffed a laugh, shaking his head in the purest of admiration and pride. Then, he turned back to his High Society audience with a grin.

"That was when I saw him."

As the tormented scream of an innocent young girl rented the battlefield air, it was in that moment that the young Captain of the Outlaws, in headscarf and jacket, charged forth from the tall grass away from cover.

[ _("The Crimson Gump" – Alan Silvestri)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqqQGWaeFlU)

He rushed forward fearlessly. Bullet impacts from Klansman kicked up dirt by his feet, while allied arrows sliced the air above his sweat soaked headscarf. For just a beat the deadly exchange lessened, many of the Klansmen not believing what they were seeing. Yet, the young captain did not hesitate, not once, in his sprint to save the very rose of New Orleans. He made for the clay drainage pipe that had rusted supports that were caked with dried mud. Adrenaline from running right through the crossfire without hesitation gave him the 'hops' to make the jump, using his foot to propel himself up a little higher to grip the stained white cylinder. The pipe rattled loudly as the tween vigilante used his legs to climb the shaky gutter that hadn't been looked after since the Yankee Occupation nearly sixty years ago. When his comrades saw that he had made it across and began to climb, a great and primal cheer rose up from the tree line. The name "Comet" being chanted among some in the rebel ranks.

Hearing the victorious cheer and chanting from the outlaws, the Grand Wizard had sent one of their pistols up the stairs to check it out. And when passing a second floor guest bedroom window, the youth was surprised by a boy in white robes and tall hood that threw open the decayed shutters. It had been the young vigilante's luck that the Klansmen was not expecting the younger to be right there. The tween's right cross was quicker than his enemy's grandfather's six shooter. The boy clocked his hooded adversary hard, before taking his gun hand in a vice grip by the wrist and yanking, hard, throwing him over the edge. The son of the County Commissioner did a flip on the way down and landed hard on his tailbone. He gave a violent bass cough and writhed in in the tall grass in crippling pain.

When he finally reached the third floor, the boy saw that the chipped and rotted whitewashed balcony overlook of the master of the house's bedroom was treacherous. So, he balanced onto the railing, before leaping toward the bedroom window, catching the ancient gutter with both hands, he swung his momentum and propelled his boot soles through the brittle window. The smashing glass was thunderous in the large hollowed bedroom as he knocked down an old vanity and cracked mirror of a once great Southern Belle of the "Old Antebellum South". He made a somersaulting roll forward with the reckless momentum of his leaping force. And when he halted it was at a crouch, hand planted on the dusty floor. His cerulean eyes were alert and, with a six sense toward danger, found what he was looking for …

And so much more than even the hardiest of grown men could stomach.

The room was lit by candles. Their scent was waxy and overpowering as the candelabras surrounded the perimeter of the room. In the soft glow of the dimmed light, there was a large, primal, occult symbol drawn in blood on the middle of the floor. In the corner he saw a dozen corpses of beheaded swans, drained and strained of every last drop of blood into a bucket. Above that evil symbol was a great society Belle's luncheon table kept for more intimate teas. On it was a young girl, her dress was ripped right down the back to the top of her skirt as she lay face down upon it, her entire bareback was completely naked and exposed. Her whole upper body was heaving in deep suffering, staring off into space as she bit hard onto a leather strap folded into her mouth. Her wrists and legs were tied down by long ropes that netted at the base of the table. She mewed and squealed in terrible pain, tears washing down her eyes.

There were many things that the boy would've predicted when he got here. He had steeled himself for some great and horrible depravity being done to such a lovely and vulnerable young girl. But what he saw was not what he was expecting, and it stopped him in his tracks. To him, what he saw that night would haunt him ever after …

Fore was far worse than he could've ever dreamed.

Behind her, the ancient demon and his host - that the boy had once thought crushed at the bottom of the ocean - still wore his robes. He was unexposed and uninterested in violating the girl's innocence. Not a finger or appendage touched her as she lay across the table. Instead, he huddled close, like a venomous spider wrapping his future feast in a web. In his hand lay a paint brush. Its hair was delicate, finely tipped, and exquisitely crafted. It was one that a person could find with great difficulty in the orient, in possession of ancient orders of monks. It took a certain kind of person to wield such an item. It was for one whose hands were meant for calligraphy or of the most delicate dedication to the deepest accuracy of the smallest detail.

Quietly, effortlessly, without acknowledging the battle raging outside between Bayou Outlaws and Klansmen, or even the new arrival, the frightening figure delicately continued. He gently dipped his brush into an inkpot. Then, with machine like fragility. did he tap the excess off the brush before he glided his hand carefully to his canvas … the girl's naked pale flesh. As he dabbed and swept, the girl made a muffled noise, chomping hard onto her leather bit. The boy saw, with a pause of the most dumbfounded look of disbelief, that the sorcerer was drawing, etching, some sort of writing on the girl's back, from shoulders to just above her soiled skirts …

But it was an inkpot of sizzling acid which took the place of an artist's paints.

They were pictures of scorpions and snakes, entire scripture of some ancient and dark religion on her back ribs. As the boy arrived, the phantom evil was in the middle of drawing a large and detailed picture of the Nubian Tree, man's bane, from the bottom edge of her lower back to the very tops of her shoulders. And like his evil priest's talismans, at the very center of the bare tree's limps was a lidless eye wreathed in flames. With every brush stroke of the wide and detailed branches of the eyed visage, the girl's supple flesh sizzled and reddened in deep burning acid that made her squeal.

The Sorcerer that possessed the body of Professor James Moriarty had looked up just in time to see three gunshots fire. He stumbled back when one went right through his diaphragm, the other through his chest, and the last had, finally, knocked him on his back. The power of the bullet slamming into his forehead hit like a hammer. There was a snapping and crackling of pressure fissures that ran down where the bullet's hole smoked on the red, purple, and green ancient mask. There was not a death rattle, or even a grunt, as this creature of another, darker, world slammed hard against the wall, sliding slowly down into a limp and lifeless position.

For a long moment a young boy stood at the ruins of the shattered window and broken vanity. In his hand was Matthew Crawley's smoking Webley Revolver. It had been used at Amiens, sent home with him from the front to the Downton hospital, and given by him to Lady Sybil Crawley before she left to Ireland for self-protection. For years, and even after escaping back to Downton with it in her coat pocket, it never left Lady Sybil's nightstand drawer till her death. Years later, her twin by appearance and nephew by blood couldn't remember ever drawing it or firing it. It was just something that he did, it was just gut instinct. He walked slowly forward, looking down on the lifeless corpse of the once 'Napoleon of Crime' that slumped against the wall.

It had been months since the last time that the boy had seen it, the creature, only pretending to be human as far as anyone was concerned. Then, he had been hiding with his friends in the hedges of Amantha Mansion as the once arch-villainous mathematics professor, possessed by a mask of a Dark Sorcerer from the ancient world, gave a fiery sermon from the front porch of the large plantation house. The boy had been frozen in fear then, amazement in his very eyes. It had been five years since his duel with Moriarty and the sorcerer in the Temple to the Dark Lord in the ruins of a sunken continent from the ages of prehistory. Then, the Sorcerer had killed many of his friends and mentors before Ms. Mina Murray, possessed by a higher power, saved the boy's life and had driven the possessed professor into the depths of that evil place. But those ruins were again swallowed by the sundering seas along with all the rest of the bodies of that failed expedition. He couldn't fathom how Moriarty survived the expedition, the second sinking, till he saw the mask, till he saw Dozens of cultists and Klansmen spread in formation out on the front yard, their white robes and hoods shadowed by the Tiki torches planted on the lawn. All of them were singing in unison some dark hymnal that wasn't Christian at all, as they observed the burning of a cross with a charred skeleton crucified to it.

And while they marched in synchronized dance, the many silhouettes of picked apart skeletons were hanging upside down from the old willow tree in the front lawn of the expansive estate. They had been Amantha Mansion's staff, her maids, footmen, cooks, and tenants. They were tortured, mutilated, and left to rot there for almost three years. That was till a group of young boys finally came in search of the missing Martha Levinson and found her grounds overrun with evil. It was in that night that plans changed. They had ran from New York, from a Knickerbocker senator's Pinkerton thugs, all the way to New Orleans in order to find Martha Levinson, to get money to board a ship bound for England, and put the chaos of the Depression behind them. But after all the years of her missing, the boys had finally found his great-grandmother, or what was left of her charred skeleton tied to a brunt cross. After that, after seeing what the old villain had done to the place that Cora Levinson had been raised so gently for the first fourteen years of her life, there would be no going back to England, to Downton. There was justice to be done and a fight to finish with an evil of the ancient world.

Now, standing over the Cretan's corpse, his father's smoking revolver in hand, it felt like justice to George Crawley.

The girl was in an incredible amount of pain when the young captain removed her leather bit. From the second that her mouth was freed, she begged the young clerk that had always made her laugh at the sweets counter, manically, to cut it off! The skin, the skin on her back, she screamed in torment for him to flay her back to make the pain stop. She squealed loudly in painful sobs that it hurt so much. But her rescuer told her that it was going to be okay, not to touch it, as he sawed her hands free with his Harlem switch blade. The girl's eyes were flooded with tears for every emotion that fell over her, shaking her head with whimpered pleading for him to rip the skin off her back. Her body shook with agony at such an incredibly torturous mutilation that had been done to her flesh. But the boy kept holding her hands, wrestling them to his chest, telling her not to touch it, that it was going to be alright, that he knew someone who could help.

But first they had to get out.

They were running out of time. He knew that they had a limited window, before his men executed "Plan B". The original thinking was that they could run off the Klansmen and then rush the sorcerer with numbers. But things changed when the Klan and Cult held up in the mansion. In response he got seven minutes before they 'scorch earth'. As he thought about what they were going to do, he apologetically rebound Lillian hands together. He didn't want her to wildly pick, scratch, or claw off the skin on her back, risking more permanent damage from the acid.

But just as he had taken her by the hands to lead her away, there was a noise that echoed loudly through the bedroom. It was a scattering and clacking noise of hundreds of arachnid legs skittering in the walls. Then, with a swish, darkness swept over them. It was like as if some great shadow of a godlike figure was cast over the room. The flames on the candelabras flickered violently till they doused themselves, leaving only sauntering plumes oozing into the blackness of the room. Drawing his father and aunt's weapon from his hip once more, the boy pivoted back to the wall to find that the Professor was gone.

Suddenly, the revolver was swatted to the ground, the old Liverpool metal rattled on the old mansion's boards loudly as it bounded under the table. A huge boney hand with long fingers, and even longer fingernails, grabbed the twelve year old's head fully, palm resting above his nose, his fingers clutching to the back of the skull like falcon talons. With a shout of pain and surprise, the masked phantasm lifted the young boy off his feet and into the humid hell of the ruined bedchamber. There were two large holes in his chest and diaphragm, the exposed flesh was pink and red, but no blood flowed from it.

But for the mask, it was as pristine and undamaged as if it had just been cut from the evil bark it was made.

The girl ran to a corner of the room, covering her eyes while curled into a defensive ball. While the boy grunted, blindly kicking, building momentum, trying to get to his adversary. The Preacher looked over his enemy. He commented that the youth had grown leaps and bounds since the last time they fought in the amphitheater of the dark temple. Yet, now, as he was then - even five years older - with face covered in shoe polish, raven curls cowled by headscarf, George Crawley had a touch of destiny to him. Then, as if being struck by lightning - like the very first meeting with his chiefest opponent - he felt something cold run through his blood.

" _The Lady and the Lawyer …"_

"What did you say?"

Everyone in the Grantham drawing room turned to Lady Mary Crawley who halted the story. She stood from the couch, where she had been lounging, pretending to be far away, uninterested in the story. But the truth was that she, in fact, felt as if she was right there in the thick of it. Her heart was in her throat till she heard the words of the Sorcerer from Jonah Robinson's mouth.

The young club owner just stared at his best friend's mother. She realized that she had made herself the center of attention in the room. It had escaped her, her true feelings, her shock and purpose, to hear that, that nickname, from a stranger's lips. To have everything that came with the oldest and purest of feelings overcome her in a phrase, and know that someone of such evil, or correctly, a t _hing of such evil_ , had spoken them. It turned her stomach, made her feel that everything she held dear, everything that kept her darkened soul stitched together was under threat by the vocalization of her one true love by something so foul.

But in the ruins of a New Orleans mansion, the trepidation of a sudden dread, had given the creation of such a union of prophecy a chance to build momentum. George twisted his body and gave a swiping kick right across the mask. Then, lifting his leg over its turned head, the boy chopped his heel hard on the back of the Professor's head. Finally, he put both ankles in a vice grip around his enemy's neck and twist till his momentum flipped the man over onto the floor. His grip on the boy's head was lost when he was face planted on the floor.

While Professor Moriarty found his feet, the boy gave a swift demonstration of foot work, like a cocking gun, before stepping into a fighting stance. In the five years since their last fight, in the four years that George Crawley had been in America, the boy had not been idle. In the three years he lived in New York he had been taught, trained, and mentored by I-Chin, the legendary master of Martial Arts. In the meantime, to supplement income, the boy smuggled whisky from Red Bank, New Jersey to Spanish Harlem. He had helped build almost hundred stories of the Empire State Building. Prize fought boys older and twice his size in Hell's Kitchen using what his sensei taught him. Since leaving New York, he had swung a hammer for twelve hours a day on a Memphis Chain Gang. And spent the rest of his time swinging his fists at hobo gangs in passing Hooverville's. By the time that George Crawley had arrived in New Orleans on New Year's Eve of 1932, the boy's arms were like iron. And since he had chosen to fight the Klan and the Cultists here, that iron only hardened.

So it was that no one could say that George Crawley didn't have "The Squabbles" when he fought his old enemy in the rematch of a duel fought on a doomed expedition to a sunken continent of long ago.

In the first battle they fought with swords - the boy, a Sikh Rajput, and his foe, an enchant king's enchanted long sword. But that night, there was no weapons in eithers hands. The boy chose his moment in the dawn of honorable manhood and went fist to fist, eye to eye, with the personification of evil on this earth. Both of them fighting over a frightened young girl against the decayed walls of the once bedroom of a king of the cotton trade before secession. George went to the body, then the face, and slipped out of the way of the big haymakers. The boy was slippery like a colored boxer, fought like a Chinaman, and hit like a sledgehammer with targeted punches. He was five years wiser, five years older, and five years stronger since their last battle. But in the night, in the dark, after everything that he saw, George had forgotten one thing …

He was still a boy.

Again, and again, in his anger, he tried the impossible task of matching his opponent's savagery, hitting him with everything he had. George had lost all sense of himself, fueled and determined by the loud and rancorous mocking of Moriarty that was given after taking every hit the boy landed. When the raspy voiced sorcerer, the phantom in the mask, asked the panting youth if he was getting tired, if his auntie needed to come give him a nap, it only fueled the boy's rage. At one point, the professor stood by with his arms open, and allowed George a free barrage. He landed shots in the ribs, the kidneys, and the face. Though, stumbled in the surprising ferocity of one so young, in the end, the twelve year old youth had done considerable damage, but it was not nearly enough to finish the job.

By the time that the boy had realized that he should've fought smarter, his guard was broken by a rocketed fist. He took hit after hit in a fury of haymakers, his opponent not bothering with jabs or faints. He backed the boy hero down with straight, unfettered, punches. He drove George back on his heels with a relentless volley of knuckles. He was bigger, stronger, and had more savagery in his wicked soul than a young boy - born of such love - could ever find in his own. The vigilante blocked what he could, redirected and countered in the way of Wing-Chun he had been taught by the Legendary I-Chin. But he was no match to stop the freight train that steam rolled him.

The only thing that could be said for the boy was that he always got back up.

Blood was running down his mouth and nose, his eye was swollen shut, and he was covered in dust. But George Crawley, whatever hit he took, always picked himself up out of the filth. He had countered with a right cross that gave a rattle to the mask, but that was all it did in effect. Eventually, it was a hit to the stomach, a knee to the face, and then a large merry-go-round swing of the boy off his feet that got him. When the Sorcerer let go, George went crashing over the table and face planting on the rotted bedroom boards among the debris.

He coughed a wheezed and painful glob of blood that shifted dust in a cloud. His hand quickly looked to stabilize himself, to push him back to his feet, when he felt something. A bottle rolled under his palm. He frowned at what he saw it was. But before he could do anything, someone grabbed the back of his upturned moleskin collar and lifted him into the air. Moriarty gave a sigh at the bloody and cut up youth. For good measure, he punched George in the swollen eye which caused him to jerk and wheeze in immense pain. The Cult leader lamented that it was a shame that even after five years of training and adventuring, he still was no match for the ancient demon. But now there was no Mina Murray or old Sikh Prince to save George Crawley this time.

To that, the boy, quietly, started to mumble something. When he was informed that the Preacher couldn't hear him, George only mumbled more. Finally, having enough, the professor brought the boy close to him with a shake of the lapels that he was holding him up by.

"Where's your paint, Mr. Picasso?" he grunted clearly.

Suddenly, in the George's left hand, he flung the contents of the abandoned ink pot into the exposed eye slit of the Sorcerer's mask. The acid immediately fizzled and sizzled as it ate ancient paint and burnt black the wood. A loud and terrible scream echoed fiercely through the room as most of the liquid seeped into the eye hole. George was dropped like a sack of potatoes with a loud thump on the warped floorboards while the Phantom and professor screamed- sizzling steam pouring out of the dark eye slit.

Summoning all of his strength, George got to his feet and charged. He propelled his shoulder right into the midsection of the professor, sending the figure stumbling backward. Stepping back, George wound up and hit the man with the hardest Haymaker he could. It landed right in the damaged eye, sending the Cult leader even further backward. And finally, for the Coup De Gras, George leapt, taking hold of the overhead doorframe to the balcony, and used his swinging momentum to put both boot soles into the Sorcerer's mask. With the final hit, the screaming man stumbled and fell onto the overlook balcony. With the force of a grown man's dead weight hitting the floor, the whole balcony, sixty years of decay, gave way like fools gold on a weight scale. With a loud and thunderous clatter, the debris of the overlook deck ripped boarding from the house as it crashed three stories down in a cloud of dust and wood eating insects.

For just a second, the boy stood at the precipice, looking down from the great hole in the wall. It was hard to see in the dark, but after everything, he wanted to know that he got him this time. But as the moments passed, he knew that there was no time. Any sane person, in any sane situation, would feel confident that a three story drop from a mansion with a jagged rain of rotted planks would do the trick. But then, the ancient evil had been crushed under the full weight of the ocean, George had shot him full of holes, and he still found a way out.

"Ming never dies …" He quoted Flash Gordon.

With a shake of his head, the boy gave up his vigil to rush back into the room. After recovering Sybil and Matthew's revolver, holstering it once more, he noticed that one of the debris from the over turned table was a long and coiled bullwhip. He shuttered at the thought of what the Shaman had wanted with it in relation to his helpless captive tied to the table. He clipped the coiled whip to his old surplus AEF utility belt, before he had grabbed Lillian who was still crouched in the corner with her face covered. There was no expression to her when the boy moved her hands down. She was in complete catatonic shock from the ordeal and torment she just suffered, and worse, of the things she saw in poisoned visions.

They had burst through the bedroom door, George leading the emotionless young girl down the hall toward the main staircase by the hand. The stairs protested with every thunderous footstep of the two tweens as they descended quickly. The boy's plan had been rather simple. They'd get to the first floor, find an abandoned room, and slip out the window. However, that plan ran into a snag when they got to the steps between the first and second floor only to find that a group of Klansmen, led by the Grand Wizard himself, were just on their way up to investigate the falling third floor deck. Both George and the Klansmen halted, stumbling and startling when they came face to face - nearly crashing into one another. Surrounded by unarmed men, the only man with a weapon was the Grand Wizard who wore his Granddaddy's Confederate Saber from his days riding with General Forrest in Mississippi. The man drew the ceremonial weapon, urging his men forward with it.

George unclipped the bullwhip from his belt, and with a startling crack, the boy snapped it at the surging men. The first charging soul at the youth put his hands up defensively. A deep bloody gash slashed his wrist, palm, and forearm. The pain and force caused the Klansman to slip and fall over the railing landing with a cloud of filth on the floorboards hard. The boy turned and shouted for Lillian to run as he swung the whip overhead and caught the second man by the ankle. The boy pulled hard, sweeping him off his feet. He rolled down the stairs taking the third unarmed Klansman with him. Both tumbled down the steps till they fell through the weakened boards at the foot, disappearing into a dark hole in a cloud of dust.

The girl looked about to wet herself again, standing frozen in the midst of violent commotion. But it was when the Grand Wizard made a rage filled lunge at the girl that she was broken of it. With a snap that sounded like a gun shot, the taut leather of the whip slashed deep down across the leader of the Klan's face. It ripped in twine his red silk hood and revealed a deep bloody gash across his face. The girl's eyes grew wide when it revealed that the Grand Wizard was, in fact, the Southern Politician that had attacked her at the store, the man who had caused all of this, all her suffering and pain in the first place … her own father.

In sight of the face as sharp and hateful as the devil, the girl fled from it.

But when George tried to cover her retreat, the last Klansman, now in a berserker's anger, took the violent snap of the whip. He caught it across his arm, letting it coil tightly till it was soaked in his blood. He used every bit of his 'good ole' boy' old man's strength to yank his arm forward, ripping the weapon from the boy's grip. With a wild hate he flung the whip all the way up to the third floor steps. Though ceremonial, the blade of the saber still buried deep into the step where George once stood. The boy leapt back as the Confederate cavalry saber swished and slashed at the slippery youth who retreated back to the second-floor landing.

The youth had a hankering to reach for his father's gun and finish this. But George, even under stress, didn't think once of settling for shooting another man tonight. Instead, he saw something else on the wall. Swiftly and smoothly moving out of the way of a vertical slash, the boy leapt onto the seat of a chair and pulled something from the wall. In his hand lay one of two cutlasses that crossed over a French Coat of Arms of an old family's tribute to its seafaring history before the Louisiana Purchase.

Though dulled and rusted, it did its job when the boy parried the old man's thrust. The Captain of the University of Auburn's fencing team and a boy trained in the blade by an old _Science Pirate_ danced and clashed. What was started in front of the register counter of a Wollsworth had come to its climax on the landing of a decaying Southern Victorian mansion. They moved up and down the second and third floor stairs, pushing and retreating in a flash of blades.

As the two fought, their giant silhouettes were visible from a large section of missing wall on the second floor, seen from the yard and the evergreen forest, illuminated by a blood moon above the grand finale of the fireworks show. The boy's comrade's halted their arrow volleys at the sight of the shadowed duel framed by colored lights that projected their shifting and dueling silhouettes larger than life on the trunks of the evergreen woods.

Even now, as then, the most endearing smirk of pride touched Jonah Robinson's lips at the sheer daring and audacity of his friend. It was of these moments that one understood the appeal of George Crawley's swashbuckler nature. It was that very 'something' that the British Aristocracy didn't seem to understand that caused many a good young boy to willingly follow George "The Comet" Crawley's lead to the very gates of Hell itself. There were very few men, much less boys of twelve, which would, single handedly, storm a haunted New Orleans Mansion, fight an Ancient Demon of pre-history toe to toe, and engage in a sword duel on the steps of a grand staircase with a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

And all of it to rescue the daughter of a mixed race whore.

But it was mid-fight, the two blades of two direct descendants of Confederate War Heroes locked together. An already tired, beaten up, young boy held on with all his might in gritted teeth against a hateful old man, both face to face between their crossed blades. But their duel subsided when they heard something heavy and scratching from the third floor. When both looked up in unison, they saw that a young girl, fierce in anger, fear, and anxiety was pushing, with all her adrenaline, a roll top desk to the foot of the staircase's ascent.

Baby girl had enough.

It was the pain in her back, the pain of the loss of innocence, and the pain in her heart for the way that her own father looked at her. All of it fueled such a rash action. George was only warned a moment in time before the girl, with a scream of familiar rage, shoved the roll top desk down the stairs. It had come flying, wildly and quickly, with thunderous noise. George leapt for the pommel of the stair railing as the third to last step sent the desk airborne. When it landed, it gave a loud sound that echoed with a warping smash. Suddenly, the entire second floor landing evaporated under the Grand Wizard's feet. With one last look at his bastard daughter, the only one of his children that inherited his much beloved Momma's face, the man disappeared into darkness with a long echoing scream.

Quickly, sobbing loudly in the receding madness of her rage, the girl helped George. The boy was dangling from the railing over the abyss of two floors and a wine cellar below. When he got back to the tenuous footing of the third floor stairs, he just shot the girl a double take. Looking down, he whistled with disbelief as they both shared the sight of the endless darkness below. But the pondering nature of the current state of their lives was cut short by the sound of revving engines of pickup trucks. Alertly, he quickly took Lillian's bound hands, and they ran back up the stairs. George only stopped to pick up the disarmed whip from earlier. The truth was that the young captain always had a last-ditch effort in mind but hoped to God that he'd never have to use it.

His prayers weren't answered.

While both tweens fled back into the master's bedroom, outside, the captured trucks of the Klansmen were gunning full speed adjacently from the middle and two sides of the house. Their tires smoked, slinging gravel, as all three trucks were held back by three heavy dockyard chains. The metal links clinked tautly from the beds of the old Fords and Chevys. The entire mansion began to shake and split as the vehicles began pulling the decayed foundations of the old house in three different directions, with the Klansmen, Cultists, George and Lillian still inside.

The old plantation house was starting to give way when the two tweens ran to the hole in the wall of the bedroom where the deck used to be. The girl began to breathe heavy in building panic at the sight of nothing but the limbs an old oak tree in front of them and the ground three stories down. When the house began to collapse around them, Lillian was in the middle of asking her gallant champion if he could hold her, claiming to be scared. But George, instead, answered by taking her hand and roughly pulling her into his chest. He wrapped an arm under her rear end, and watching the room split up, the boy leapt through the hole in the wall. The girl's scream was buried by the thunder of the collapsing old house that disappeared into a cloud of dust. But from that dense fallout both George and Lillian came swinging out of the cloud.

At the last moment, having leapt with all of his might, the boy, with one hand, slung the bullwhip. The coiling bloody leather wrapped one of the branches of the oak tree. When both tweens fall was caught in the momentum of the secured whip on one of the lower branches, something snapped in George's shoulder. He let out a grunt of pain that caused him to let go of the whip. Both boy and girl went flying in the air, landing with a hard and rolling thumps as they hit the ground. Once more a snap erupted from George's shoulder as he landed. Dust and pollen of the unkept yard rose under the illumination of the blood moon overhead of a Summer Night in New Orleans.

When George got his head right, he found himself staring into the face of a cracked and sunburnt dolly, naked and abandoned in the field. There was a pang of sentimental sadness that tore into him in sight of it. He knew and loved a young girl, an odyssey's journey back home, that collected and loved dollies. And he knew that it would break her heart to see one so neglected and broken. For the young ballerina's endless compassion and propensity to love deeply didn't stop at people, but for toys as well. Some might have called it childish, but for George, it was one more thing that he'd love forever about the girl who was his very future, a girl who waited for him when all of this would be over. He commented tiredly to the eyeless doll that his shoulder was jerked back in place by landing from what separated it … "Damn miracle" he muttered as he cradled his arm and slowly found his feet.

When the vigilante got his bearings, his surroundings were overwhelmed with a deep silence. The Klansmen and the Cultists were crushed underneath the old mansion, and it seemed that his men had stuck to the plan. He found himself alone, but for the young girl lying face down on a filth covered string puppet of a Spanish flamenco dancer. She was motionless when the boy approached. He winced at the ugly and swollen marks of the acid etching on her silky pale flesh. In the distance he heard the sound of horse hoofs, and if he squinted he could make out the torch light of more Klansmen coming. Placing his hand on her belly, the boy let out a sigh of relief to feel it going up and down on his palm.

[ _("Wayfaring Stranger" – Rhiannon Giddens)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Z4PAZX9Bs)

With a quick look down the track at the growing light of galloping ghosts in tall hoods, the boy grunted, shoulder clicking, as he removed his jacket. He draped it over the girl's shoulders to protect her raw bare back from the elements. Lifting her, with some effort, across his shoulders, the young boy quickly rushed away. He ran and hopped through rustling tall grass and under the cover of the darkened forest as the first Klansmen on horseback was arriving at the house.

George Crawley, a boy of twelve, beaten, bad shoulder, and eye swollen shut, carried that poor girl for five miles in the heat of a Southern Midnight. Moving through thick bayou bush, swamp, and tall forests, he didn't stop. Even at the many close calls that night of torch wielding Klansmen blindly wandering the wilderness and country roads vainly in search for him. The boy used moonlight and the lanterns left in the windows by sharecroppers to help guide George and his Merry Men in the night on their raids and ambushes. But the boy would never burden them with his troubles. Though they were hospitable to a fault in their meager means, he did not trust, after several close scrapes, that he wasn't being tracked.

By the time that the first light of day touched the tops of the forest around the ancestral home of Martha and Cora Levinson, a group of worried young rebels gathered on the whitewashed Gothic Mansion's expansive front porch. Then, after a long wait, ready to give up, they spotted a torn up and filthy wayfarer stumbling badly down the Plantation's gravel path of bowing trees. Quickly, they all ran down to meet him, arriving just in time for George to collapse in a heated cloud of gravel dust with the tormented and unconscious young girl still across his shoulders.

Then, Jonah Robinson let the air sit in the Grantham's London drawing room.

He was witling again, blowing wood dust off the wing of his dragon. After a moment he looked up and saw the entranced and confused looks all around. He gave an amused noise as he folded his knife back into its handle. Lord and Lady Grantham seemed lost in their own heads in a dark world, a story, they had never heard before. Cora had read of George's exploits before as written by Edith. Robert had also read the stories, but had found it all rather fanciful. He didn't call his daughter or Grandson liars, but as a soldier, he knew that some 'war stories' tend to get overblown over the years. But it seemed, at least to Robert, the details that were often omitted in these stories of New Orleans didn't ground the story, but, instead, seemed to make them even less believable than before.

Edith was stoic and unshakable. There was a tolerance to these things built deep inside. After all, Lady Hexham had heard and published plenty of George's adventures in America, and particularly in New Orleans in her magazine. The boy's friends, Jonah in particular, who had been party to many adventures, had told her of George's exploits. Though, she had always felt that there were some things that they held back in telling her, some truths that no one could understand that wasn't there.

But of all the people in the room, it was Mary that didn't have anything to say about it. She seemed completely unreadable, coldly distant, staring at Sybbie who seemed stuck in the world that she was never allowed to see. The entire family, at the time, had heard of the 'Bush Wars' going on in New Orleans. But when Cora, Edith, and Marigold were determined to go down there to help the American FBI save George and his friends from being annihilated by an army of three chapters of the Ku Klux Klan gathering, it ignited a fire storm. There had been a gigantic clash in the family about the incident long after its climax. For many years afterward, those who went to New Orleans - to save their only boy - ever held it against those who stayed.

Lord and Lady Grantham nearly divorced over Robert's refusal to come due to bitter feelings against his own grandson and heir. His exclamation that the boy got himself in the mess and he could 'jolly well' live with the consequences of his "damned fool Idealistic Crusade", had earned Lord Grantham a vase thrown at his head by his wife. Lady Edith made no illusion that she was terribly disappointed in both Tom and Mary for not coming to help, especially Mary. The boy's mother had never been convinced, even till this day, that the tales coming out of America about her son were true. And Marigold was simply heartbroken that Lady Grantham and her 'Aunt' Edith were the only ones willing to go rescue George.

Sybbie, at the time, had been the personal ward of the King and Queen … it seemed a much nicer title than the truth of her being their hostage. And though the royal household – to which Ladies Grantham and Hexham were a part of as Queen Mary's companions – had allowed them to deal with the matter, even when pertaining to their own enemy. Their sense of honor to a valiant adversary did not extend to allowing their prized hostage and beauty, Ms. Sybil Branson, be allowed to escape the gilded and luxurious cage to which she was placed in court. Prince Edward, in particular, would not allow a situation in which the societally strategic Heiress of many court plots would be allowed to disappear into the wilds of America and be absconded with by the Winsor's chiefest enemy. Thus, despite her tears, rage, and tantrums, the King and Queen sent the girl to the Scottish Highlands to be kept under guard and supervision.

And in her long isolation, raised in the homes of many prominent aristocrats of the Imperial court, she had allowed herself to be poisoned against George. Like her Donk, both had their hopes of his return jilted for years. Many nights she prayed that he would return to rescue her and their Granny from those that kept them from their family as a way of assuring Loyalty that was in question due to George's deeds against the Royal House. And as the years melted one to another in her high society captivity, it bred bitter feelings in the wake of his absence. And it was in those years, that the most beautiful of young girls with a bow in her hair and the most lavished and fashionable gowns had adopted the many prejudices and fashionable whims of court life. Chief among them was a deep and abiding hatred for her the very boy she loved.

But since their fierce reconciliation upon his return, the girl was once more haunted by guilt of not going to New Orleans. Of taking to heart the many dowagers and grand Ladies of the Royal Court that filled her head with such story book tales. Believing their nonsense of her great purpose in life as 'the sensible one' of the family, and their toxic lectures about someone she loved so deeply since she could remember being bad for Sybbie's golden reputation as the King and Queen's "Daughter".

But in the end, the five Eton chaps gathered around the beautiful heiress of "Branson and Talbot Motors" had been the true audience for the story. They had spent weeks bragging and playing up their great skill in athletics. They had competed in society competitions, titled women and their debutante daughters sitting at white cloth tables in their finest sun dresses and hats, clapping politely, tying their 'favors' to their arms to anoint them as their champion. That was the extent of their knowledge of daring. The top hats and tails they wore as school tradition of fine young gentlemen was what they knew of 'dashing'. And the son of a poor sharecropper outside New Orleans had enough of hearing them talk nonsense about a young man he admired, his sworn brother. He was done with them making sneering comments on things which they couldn't comprehend.

They were clearly intimidated by the story, they all adjusting their tuxedo coats and clearing their throats. It was exactly what Jonah wanted, expected, in the first place. There was a look of pure indignation on their faces. The young man, then, gave a slow and factious clap as he paced toward them causally. There was a sweeping look around the room by the young club owner at the other guests, the adults in the room. Lips pursed, eyes glared, and a face of mocking amusement, the tall young black man didn't stop till he was clapping inches from the alpha of the group's face. Then, he stared the young Englishman down.

"Is that what you're expecting to hear?" he asked. "Hmm? When you hit a target with your cute little bow and arrow …?" He looked out at the women of the dinner party. "They all clap, sipping Champaign and orange juice, dolled up for you big, _strong_ , boys?" Jonah brushed the teen's shoulder off with a swish of his fingers. He leaned in a little closer. "Is that what you think I heard after I killed three men that night with my longbow? Do you think anyone clapped when I bulls-eyed a shaft fifty yards from a tree line? You know, I don't think a mother of six, with a feed store to run. I … you know, I really don't think that respectable woman of the community is gonna give me the credit, tie little purple ribbons around my arm, for landing that shaft right through her husband's throat?" He tilted his head. "You think their four boys is gonna find in their hearts more or less fondness for colored folk, because, some uppity nigger done killed their cracker ass daddy and made their whole family destitute?" The glowering eyes of Eton's Head Boy were staring straight ahead.

Jonah just gave a smug, "huh", as he paced back.

"You think I'm a funny man … don't ya? My boss and business investor, Mrs. Edith, winds me up, her silly monkey, and I smash my cymbals together for her and Ms. Marigold's amusement?" He asked in confrontation. "I says "he gots that demon inside him" and ya'll laugh, think I'm making some monkey shines?" He made a mocking accent of a colored actor in a Minstrel Show. "But you ain't laughing now, are you boys?" He asked rhetorically. "You're thinking, wondering, if what I just told you was true …" He pushed.

When he didn't get a response he just nodded.

"Well let's just say it is … just for a moment." He turned around and paced toward them. "Let's say it happened, with poor little Lillian Bordeaux getting her back defiled by a vicious and evil creature that you would never want to meet in your dreams, much less in real life." He nodded. "What do you think it takes to fight something like that? You's men ain't ya? Ya'll Big and tough, now? With your best girl's pretty little favors around those big and strong arms, like Hercules? You think you'd stand and fight him, go a few rounds with _'The Necromancer'_?" He leaned in, jerking his head inquisitively. When they didn't respond, the young club owner just nodded. "Naw …" He scoffed. "You'd do exactly what we all did when we came across him, you'd run." He answered with first-hand experience of engagements and raids ending when the frightening demon mask came out of the midnight fog off the Mississippi.

"We all ran … all but one of us. Yes sir, only one of us ever stood his ground." He looked out the window for a second whimsically.

"When he saw that mask, he always ran toward it, not away from it." the youth scratched his cheek. "Their first fight he got him an eye." He tapped just under the socket as he turned toward the room. "The second time they fought, it was after the FBI hammered the Klan when we fought them at the "Siege of Amantha Pointe". Escaping that night, the professor took something precious from Geroge as a last-ditch hostage. He challenged him to come get _her_ back, to meet him for a duel. He dressed his hostage up, nice and fancy for the festival and tied her to the top of a Mardi-Gras float." The young black man gave a mirthful chuckle of admiration.

"You remember that don't you, Lady Grantham?" He turned and pointed to Cora. "You remember how he came swinging down from a Bourbon Street banner, head scarf on his head, yo'daddy's rebel saber across his back?" To the memory, Lady Grantham simply nodded quietly. Her eyes troubled in the flash of the incident through her memory that she had tried hard to forget. "Yeah, yeah, Sure …" Jonah confirmed scratching his sideburns as he continued back toward the young chaps. "That time, he got him the evil bastard's hand. But once again the professor escaped." He lifted up his hand, the same that the hero had taken off the masked evil of New Orleans, showing it to everyone. The young club owner strolled back toward the Eton chaps, putting it back in his pocket.

"The last time they fought was just before he came back here - hasn't been that long at all. See, after he beat "The Necromancer" on Mardi-Gras, they lost track of one another for several years. But they ain't never forgotten or forgiven what happened in New Orleans. And before he came home to England, there was unfinished business for both of them. That business led them down into the midnight tombs under the St. Louis Graveyards by the river front. They fought for a family jewel, an African Ruby the size of a ..." He showed them his fist. "It was the very thing that started this whole thing, started when Mrs. Levinson came home to Amantha to retrieve it, to save her family, and found her great-grandson's old enemy and his dark clergy waiting."

"She, her staff, tenants, and everyone she knew was tortured and killed when she refused to tell the Moriarty where the jewel was." He explained. "Now, after seven years, it finally came to a head. The two of them grappled, boxed, slashed, and stabbed at one another. I don't know what, exactly, happened down there … he never told me. But I know that when it was over only one of them came out of that tomb." He tilted his head condescendingly to future members of the House of Lords.

"You see, boys, you don't seem to understand something, here … so let me, nah, _let me_ tell you what it is." He clapped his hands together and placed his pressed fingers under his nose pensively for a moment. "You ain't never, in all of your lives, gonna see what that evil fiend is all about and can do." He chuckled mirthfully. "You ain't never gonna see what he had done to people, the twisted mutilations, the horror and depravity that he delighted …"

"Mr. Robinson, I'm sure …" Robert began.

"Reveled!" Jonah talked over Lord Grantham as he looked the future Duke in the eye. "The things he reveled in, they're things that would turn your ball hairs white, boy." He spoke quieter. "That thing is as pure an evil as anything that God tried to shield us from when he created this here world." He replied. "And somewhere deep below the surface of New Orleans, someone killed that thing. Beat it to death with his own two hands." He chuckled to himself with a shake of his head. "How do you think he did that?" He asked. "Do you think that George "The Comet" Crawley was just more good than that thing was evil?" Tension was in his face the closer he came to the Head Boy.

Suddenly, he turned next to him. "Sybbie, you best done call the Pope, I think you Catholics got another candidate for sainthood!" There was nothing but mocking in the young man's tone as he squared up to the young aristocrat again.

"Naw …" he shook his head. "Naw, he wasn't no damn saint that night, not down there." The youth shrugged. "It was, because, he was meaner than that thing was. He had a hate in him that was more powerful than it was evil. George Crawley's got a demon living in his past, and for just one night she caught up with him, took control of the wheel, and drove him down there." Jonah was ominous as he was deadly serious. "It's a hate, more powerful than any of your ambition for the money of these here young beauties tonight." He nodded. "She takes different forms. Sometimes, the demon is a baby girl with her mama's pale skin, her daddy's blue eyes, and spoiled disposition to be the center of her big brother's life. Sometimes she's got blonde hair, an angel's face, and being picked apart on silk sheets by old Knickerbocker crows. But most of the time she's sitting in this room, with that cold look on her face, acting like she ain't hearing a damn word I say tonight, ain't ya?!"

Jonah never looked, but all eyes, somehow went straight to Lady Mary Crawley.

"You're right, me and George, we might not be any damn heroes." He admitted. "But you boys better quit acting like ya'll are hard." The man challenged the group of Eton's finest. "Cause, you ain't never seen what it takes to be it." There was a long pause as he looked unflinchingly into the young aristocrats' eyes.

They were still as statues for a long time, till the alpha of the group of boys finally flinched. He swallowed hard, eyes flickering to Lord Grantham for a second of asking for some sort of help, trapped in point blank range of unfiltered American candor. The shame of the nonverbal flicker toward Lord Grantham was not half as worse as letting the young nightclub owner see it.

The Black youth made a snorted noise of interest as he slowly eased back in the tension filled party room of the London Season. He blew the dust off one last time from the figurine he carved at one of the head boy's lackeys in taunting, before he walked away. They all watched the handsome young man as he handed the carving of the noble family's sigil over to Lord Grantham, gifting it to him in a bow of mock gentlemanly fashion. Without having to be asked or hinted of such, Jonah had decided to go.

"It might not seem like it …" Lady Grantham said to him. "But I'm grateful, we all are, that you stand up for George." She said full heartedly of a grateful mother.

To that, the young man only gave a hearty chuckle. "Me, standing up for George?" he asked. "Hell no, George can take care of himself." He said humorously. "If you think I told that story to gain sympathy for the swashbuckler, you ain't heard it right." He announced to the room as Thomas Barrow handed the dapper Entrepreneur his coat.

"I don't understand …" the Countess frowned.

The tuxedo wearing youth slipped the coat on with the Grantham's butler's help. "It's a warning, Your Ladyship." He said loudly. He gave a good look across the drawing room. "You might think that I've made up half of the things I've said tonight. But I ain't gonna argue with you, because, I'd pay good money to see those boys over there finally push their luck too far." He fixed his collar. "Is it true? Is it Monkey Shines? Who knows … but I'll tell you this boys … keep pushing. Treat these fine young ladies over here wrong, keep talking that crazy mess about George Crawley not being shit, and by all means try to prove it …" He put his hat on, sliding a finger across the brim smoothly. With a tip of it, he walked out of the drawing room with one last sentiment in ear shot.

"Eventually, you might just get exactly what you asked for."


	2. Opening Crawl

[ _("The World of Tomorrow" – Edward Shearmur)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ50C9aKerw)

**DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAIL OF PRAGA SAGA**

**VOLUME I**

_**THE WAYFARING STRANGER** _

_PEACE! After eight long years of exile as an_ _**OUTLAW** _ _to the British Crown, Captain George Crawley has returned to his ancestral home of_ _**GRANTHAM COUNTY** _ _. But things are not all as they seem._

_Though the young captain has freed his mother, Lady Mary Crawley, and the beautiful Ms. Sybil Branson from the clutches of the cruel hands of_ _**SPECTRE** _ _**AGENTS** _ _and reclaimed the Estate of Downton Abbey for the House of Grantham, the matters are far from concluded. The dark shadow of a terrible worldwide_ _**DEPRESSION** _ _shades the future of Downton Abbey, while the memory of the Iron fisted, and tyrannical rule of Lady Mary Crawley darkens much of the House of Grantham's reputation._

_Meanwhile, not convinced that SPECTRE has left England, Valiant Captain Crawley and his partner Ms. Branson have chosen to pursue their adversaries machinations in hopes of stopping their dastardly plans to take possession of a powerful **ANCIENT ARTIFACT**. Who, in the hands of Evil, could prove to be just the type of Occult Power Source that Adolf Hitler dreams of to head his Vile Nazi **WAR MACHINE** to take over the world._


	3. Part I

George Crawley had been out two weeks.

He hadn't said where he was or where he was going. If Thomas Barrow or Lady Grantham needed to get a message to him, they were instructed to call a certain phone number, let it ring once, hang up, and then call back to leave the message when the phone picked up. It seemed rather excessive sounding to Lord Grantham, but George seemed dead serious about it. The boy was going up against a rather excessively large and foul character that had been paid by Heinrich Himmler's Archaeological secret society. He was a legendary and mysterious bounty hunter or assassin - whichever you preferred - that was incredibly dangerous and paid many Marks in order to eliminate "The Comet" by any means necessary.

Thus, it was, that for two weeks in August of 1936 those who cared and loved George most had no word or idea as to where he was. Lady Grantham was assured by her middle daughter and her son-in-law that these things happen with George all the time, and that he always turned up alive. She disliked it, especially, when technically Cora was still her teenage grandson's guardian and benefactor. She felt that since Mary had spent years unwilling to take responsibility, that as his Grandmother, Lady Grantham should have some say in her boy's whereabouts … that someone should in the least.

But the one person who was more offended by the prospect was Sybbie Branson. Since George had returned, they had been inseparable. She had accompanied her best friend on many incursions that had a certain "Cloak and Dagger" type of mystery and danger that she partnered with him through. The girl genius of all things mechanical engineering had rather enjoyed herself in the aftermath, both having gained notoriety in the London papers for the weird cases the partners solved and the 'colorful' villains they captured together.

But when she arrived at Crawley House with her suitcase to accompany him on another metropolitan mystery, she was told "not this time, Syb …" as the young man loaded his sleek and futuristic revolver. He told her that 'this one' was much too dangerous and that the 'beast' he was facing, in particular, was a type of figure that "played for keeps".

She argued and threw a fit, but George would not take her along with him, sighting that this fight wasn't a case of whimsy fit for publishing in a magazine for young girls, nor a place for their amateur Lady Sleuth heroine. The girl turned her head fiercely when he had tried to kiss her forehead in parting. But instead, despite her spiteful rebuff, he pecked her on the corner of her mouth before lowering his goggles and storming off to danger on his motorcycle. Since then, the girl had been fit to be tied, grumpy and irritable to everyone, including her boyfriend and suitors.

Her anger and outrage of being left behind was her blanket excuse for why she did it, initially …

She couldn't quite remember why they were there. But Sybbie recalled trying to get the name of a rather swanky club that she and George had went too in London while on the hunt for "The Blind Turk". He had been a former Ottoman soldier that fought in Palestine and knew of the location of the "Lost Knight's Tomb". It had been a holy site which carried the whereabouts of the "Grail of Prague", a Jewish Relic that George and the Nazi 'Ahnenerbe' were competing to find. It was the whole reason that the Teutonic cultist had hired an exotic bounty hunter from the Indian sub-continent in the first place, trying to eliminate the competition that always seemed a few steps ahead. In the back of her mind, she knew that whatever was going on in London, it had to do with the ancient Jewish Chalice, and she wanted in on it.

The teenage girl had figured that George had to have written down where he was going somewhere at Crawley House, and she'd use the club as an excuse to go off on her own to prove to George that she wasn't some 'Great Lady Sleuth'. There was more to her skills than finding Duchesses missing jewels, recovering noble families prized artifacts, capturing light fingered Butlers- cheap confidence men in livery - and villainous fortune hunters in the vein of Ms. Jane Austen's typical Rogue's Gallery. After their work on the "Jackal Case" with the Egyptology Professor, the "Hyborian Tablet", and Doctor Jekyll's incomplete medical journal … the girl thought that she had proved herself that she could handle the most dangerous of capers. Indeed, if the mysterious figure from Calcutta was more dangerous than a hulking man-dog hybrid covered in Hieroglyphics that had tried to murder Lucy Smith at her and Tom Branson's vow renewal, than Sybbie's help was imperative to George.

Yet, to the beautiful young woman's credit, she had attempted to go fetch the 'club address' on her own. But one's judgment is never so impaired as when in the company of other adolescences that had been having 'too' good a time in the hours before. She knew that George had a strict list of people that could enter Crawley House while he was away. Sybbie, Thomas, Anna, and Bates were the only people on it. And she couldn't deny, even in her anger, that she felt incredibly burdened with guilt when she broke that trust, allowing Marigold and their gaggle of friends to enter the darkened house with her that night.

The boys, since being emasculated by Jonah during the Season, had been fairly interested in Crawley House, as was most of the Aristocracy. One who had heard so much about George's exploits would, understandably, be curious about the place that he lived and secluded himself from High Society. The girl was only glad that Ethel Parks, George's Housekeeper, was taking her time off to spend with Mrs. Bryant, her son's grandmother. Had the red-haired woman been here, she might have had a heart attack to see strange young men poking around her master's house and his incredibly private and rare items.

Since Lady Merton's illness had left her with round the clock care at Downton Abbey, long before George's return, the boy had redecorated his late papa's house. It started with the removal of many, inherited, Grantham paintings, statues, and busts that he had stacked unwantedly in Downton's foyer. The boy treating the priceless sundries like cheaply bought chaff at a yard sale. Much to Lord Grantham's annoyance, now the first thing that people saw when they entered Crawley House was a rather large painting of "The Bonnie Prince" Charles Edward Stuart. While in the sitting room, there always remained a portrait of George Washington. Lady Grantham only smirked to her husband, upon seeing the paintings of famed rebels against the Georgian Crown, claiming that no one would ever accuse their only grandson of being subtle. The rest of the house was rather the same as it had always been since Matthew and Isobel Crawley had moved into it twenty-four years prior. Pulled all together, Crawley House had been transformed from a powder blue antique of the Regency era to a Peregrinator adventurer's rustic country house of trophies and library, with wood paneling and squares of stained glass on the windows that faced Isobel's famed gardens.

But it was when Sybbie entered the rounded study, with a view of the rose garden, that she felt so incredibly at home and comfortable than anywhere else in the world.

Immediately, the entire parties' eyes were drawn to the very center of the room. There, vaulted from the ceiling, was a spherical three-dimensional astrolabe. bands of metal, some gilded, other silvery, quietly spun and revolved around a large diamond like crystal that was at its very center. Upon each revolving metallic wheel there were runes hollowed out, except for the gilded bands, which bore hieroglyphic symbols. At first glance, one might have thought it all nonsense - as much of the group did. Yet, upon further inspection, there was a pattern of corresponding programing between six different dialects that, when read together, confirmed sought information from the deeply intellectual and scientific instrument.

There was a bit of Robert in the way that Sybbie, showily, astonished the unwelcomed guests she brought by going to a panel on the wall and throwing a switch. There was a collective wonder as the group of teenagers watched a sunroof be uncovered from above. Then, when she pulled another, the sound of mirrors on mechanical contraptions, of her own design, shifted their position. This time there was an audible awe in their voices when the reflection of pure starlight gleamed down from the sunroof and onto the crystal core of the astrolabe. Suddenly - with a giggle of childlike joy from a bouncing Marigold on her heels - glowing runes and Hyborian Symbols began to spin languidly across the walls and floor of the study in the blazing illuminated distillment of crystal starlight. The entire group of youths watched in shocked amazement as rows and patterns of strange symbols revolved around and over them in a spectacular light show of the likes few had ever seen. But of all the group it was Marigold who was taken, smiling a large toothy grin, looking at her hand and Burberry coat emblazoned with revolving starlight that gleamed on her golden locks.

Sybbie proudly informed them that it could also be used in sunlight. But her absolute favorite was moonlight. Fore, sometimes, there were some of George's books and maps that had special and secret markings that could only be read on specific nights of the year or during certain types of moons. Then, he'd focus the crystal and the bands on a specific spot, and they'd appear on the parchment in glowing ciphers that he'd read and sketch.

Pulling down a switch, the astrolabe revolutions slowed to a crawl. It seemed a random sense of inertia that was halting the gilded and silvery wheels. But there was a strange order to the chaos as they settled. Then, all the glowing runes and hieroglyphs spinning on the walls of Crawley House dissipated. Like a bright spotlight on the London Stage, the combined reflection of starlight on crystal shined on a tall pedestal bookstand on the other side of the room. Feeling rather accomplished and drunk on the pride of finally being able to show off something quite wonderful and amazing that she had a hand in, the girl led the group to the marble bookstand. If George had been there, he might have had a heart attack that the girl was leading a tour group of "Eton fancy boys" through his private things.

Upon the old Roman relic - taken from the grand chapel of the Old Fortress in the distance upon 'Spectacle Rock' that overshadowed Downton Abbey - was a large and heavy tome that looked to be able to kill a man with one blow. Its cover was hardened in very ancient boiled black leather. The book was already opened to a page in particular, the same page that it always was when on display in the library. Upon the dry leaf like paper was the most beautiful artistry of hand drawn and colored embroidery. The writing in it was of an elegant and artistic gothic font. Sybbie revealed it to be "The Downton Abbey Chronicle". It was a written and drawn record maintained by the monks of the Abbey from the Last Roman Kings of Britannia, to the Saxon invasion, all the way to the fall of the House of York to the Usurpers Richard III and Henry Tudor.

Then, the girl straightened the pages with her palm so they could all glance at a gloriously gorgeous illustration of a milky limbed maiden wandering a painted forest riverbank in long cerulean raiment and a crown of white roses. Her feet were bare upon the mossy rocks, and her tresses were long and raven. Even in the page she was beautiful beyond reckoning. Sybbie proudly proclaimed the bewitching beauty "Lady Elfstone". She had been the Last Princess of Byzantium, the beloved Lady Fair of the "Black Dragon", and the first Lady Grantham. With a fond smile shared with Marigold, both girls took a moment of pride to know that they were both direct descendants of such an angelically fair and lovely seeming woman. But it was in that moment, an entire room slowly turning to the oblivious Sybbie in wonder, fore none could now deny it.

It seemed some trick of the crystal starlight that Lady Elfstone and Sybil Branson looked completely identical, as if the exact same woman on the page was right next to them, speaking in third person.

As they stared at the girl who was the doppelganger of the woman on page, deeply enchanted by her immense beauty that glistened in crystalized starlight, Sybbie flipped pages with dry shuffling flutters. Finally, after the creaking protest of the ancient binding, she made a noise of satisfaction when she reached a certain page. When the girl tapped her finger, they looked down. Upon it was shown a detailed painted picture of a hall of stone. There, light shined from a rounded stained-glass window upon a large marble slab where two sculpted figures lay side by side. To the left was a knight in full plate, one hand grasped a stone sword, the other was intertwined with the hand of the person next to him. There was a sorrow even upon a face so perfect and beautifully crafted. Her long tresses were finely carved as she rested on a bed of glossy flowers. Upon her brow she bore a crown of roses and her marble raiment matched the drawing in the pages of the book. There was a mixture of wonderment and sudden, unexplained, sorrow in the group that looked down at the hand drawn artistry that depicted the final resting place of the "Black Dragon" and his beloved Lady Elfstone, the very first Lord and Lady Grantham.

But Sybbie wasn't pointing to her and Marigold's ancestors resting place. Instead, her finger was tapping a blank page. Unlike the rest of the book, it seemed that there was new and better binding at the end of the chronicle. It took George Crawley a long time, but he had finally recovered all the missing pages that had been torn out by the monstrous and cruel Second Earl - who wished to rob the history from the House of Grantham and supplant it with his own version. But, centuries later, and by a mysterious hand that he had not revealed the source of, not even to Sybbie, George had the book expertly rebound and restored. And now, the origins and truth of the founding of the House of Grantham was available for all to see and read, despite Lord Grantham and Lady Mary's willful ignorance of many hard truths they would not acknowledge. For both their reputations in the Winsor Court and London Society was predicated on the vile lies told by the Second Earl.

But in a book filled with many wonderous artisanship and calligraphy, it seemed strange that there was a blank page by the illustration of the final resting place of the last Princess of Byzantium and the secret love child of the valiant Lord of Downton and the beautiful Lady Kate Percy. For years George pondered if it had been an artistic choice by the monks? Or perhaps they found it disrespectful to put any writing adjacent to their liege and his most beloved star. The question plagued him for eight long years, till he returned to England. Then, having handled many ancient documents with many secrets, he woke Sybbie to show her what she now revealed to Marigold and their friends. The girl placed her palm over the seemingly blank page and began to say words in a language that no one recognized, indeed, a language that was rarely ever spoken aloud since the changing of the world in ages of pre-history.

[ _("The Ivory Tower" (Reprise) - Giorgio Moroder)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ck6vCYjy0)

Suddenly, after speaking what she remembered of George's musically beautiful poetic benediction, there was a pause. They all looked at the raven-haired heiress doubtfully for a moment, as if Sybbie had lost her mind. But then Marigold made a sudden noise. With a startle they all gathered closer as the light from the crystal waxed in shimmering floating particles. Slowly, like the languid falling of the late autumn snows, the glimmering speckles began to dust the blank page. And as they accumulated, shapes, lines, and symbols began to appear. Before long, the groups faces were illuminated by a blazing page of an old abbot's starlit writings and drawings.

It seemed a door of some sort by the ivy designs that crawled up drawn columns. At its top center was a four-pointed star shining down upon a tall stylized tree with wide bare branches. At the foot of the tree stood what looked like a hybrid of a Celtic or Roman Spatha long sword stabbed into a pedestal etched with a druid symbol. Wreathed at the top and bottom of the drawing were arching runes, Celtic on top and Latin on the bottom.

When she first saw it, Sybbie had asked George what it meant. But the young man she loved didn't answer her, suddenly lost a thousand miles away in an age undreamed many century ago. When she asked again, the boy only kissed her gently, telling her he didn't know. It was then that it occurred to the girl that he absolutely did know what it said, yet, was perplexed of what it actually meant. All she could grasp was that it was some riddle that could only be answered at the "Old Fortress" where their ancestors were buried … along with all their secrets.

But of that melancholy place that was found atop the tall wooded peak that overlooked Downton Abbey, it had long been placed off-limits by George to all their family. The young adventurer had gone to those mysterious ruins alone after that day to get the answers he sought. When he returned, they found him gravely injured, cut up and bloody as if he had been in fierce battle with a terrible foe. To their granny, he simply said he fell down the hill side when he wasn't paying attention. But Sybbie knew better. George Crawley doesn't trip on hill sides. Yet, of his experiences there, to not even his best friend did he tell tale, afraid she might seek out the danger of those haunted ruins herself in curiosity. Even now, eight months since, he still hadn't spoken what he found at the "Old Fortress" beyond their ancestor's rented armor which he had saved. But what was clearly spoken was that Sybbie, Donk, Mama, and their Aunt Edith should forever stay well clear of that terrible place and whatever enduring and cursed evil haunted the ancient ruins of the House of Grantham's once ancestral stronghold.

The entire crowd of suitors and boyfriends gathered around tightly, transfixed upon the gleaming characters and images drawn by starlight. They could hardly believe what it was they were seeing with their own eyes. The beauty, wonder, and magnificence of this lost art of the ancient world seemed like magic.

But above everyone in the room, within Marigold there seemed to be a change.

Something of weight and consequence was shown brightly in her brilliant emerald eyes. Everyone, out of some instinct of reverence, stepped away, making a path for her as she glided up to the book. In the shimmering glint of the sparkling starlight, it seemed as if her eyes were consumed with light. Her golden hair began to flutter without breeze as if some surge of elemental power went through her. Gently she placed a single slim white hand upon the glimmering text. Then, in a voice that did not sound her own, the girl began to speak. But to what language Sybbie couldn't say, fore she had never heard anything so alien and yet so ethereal in her life. The beauty of her formed words pleased everything inside those who heard her voice as powerful as the unbending mountain and as serene as the trickling forest stream.

As Marigold spoke, the starlight from the crystal at the core of the astrolabe began to focus, highlighting her features in an ethereal glow. Her sister was convinced in that moment, that it was some speech of heaven itself given to her by the Lord of Hosts. Suddenly, as the light began to consume the girl, some anxiety of fear broke through the wonder and amazement of Marigold's sheer angelic appearance. Something drummed in Sybbie's mind, warning her to stop this, stop her, before she is taken by whatever power was stumbled upon in her moment of showing off.

Quickly, Sybbie grabbed Marigold's hand to remove it from the glowing text. But the hand nor girl would budge, as if she had become some immovable stone statue or pillar of power. Desperate and afear Sybbie called over Marigold's ethereal prophecy that she spoke in looping words, but escalating intensity. But what frightened Sybbie the most was the golden beauty's gaze as she looked out to the infinite, beyond the veil of time. It was then that she saw the tears in Marigold's eyes and knew that her sorrow and languish came from the momentary knowledge of the future. Fore, she alone, glimpsed the fall of the House of Grantham and the short and battle-weary lives of its heroic exiled heirs lost like lone stars obscured by the many decades that are endured bereft of hope.

But all the same the raven-haired girl quickly sprinted to the control switches for the spinning astrolabe. Desperately the teenage princess flipped them, killing the power, and retracting the sunroof. The mirrors on the country house's roof whirred back and the door slid shut with a loud boom that bathed the room and other worldly scene into darkness.

Unable to see what had happened in the dark, the heiress flicked on the lamp on her Uncle Matthew's old desk.

What she found, as the whirring noise of the spinning spherical clockwork machine slowed its momentum and inertia, was a room frozen. All in the group seemed lost in a sudden daze, each eye clouded and staring off into space. For a moment all was deathly silent in the study, except for the voice of George Crawley in the head of the girl he loved. It was the young man, reminding Sybbie, angrily, for the umpteenth time, that the things in his study are serious astrological and scientific tools … _**Not Toys!**_ There was no knowing what all the things in this room were capable of in an uncontrolled environment or exposed to undetermined factors. They were dealing with ancient artifacts that even he did not fully understand and could be incredibly dangerous! Which is why strangers weren't allowed in his study, much less his house, in the _fucking_ first place!

Seeing Marigold completely frozen, lifeless, like the perfect dolly ever made, could have almost made Sybbie punch her own head in anxiety. How could she have been so stupid, so childish? Quickly she strode forward, and out of some unspoken instinct placed in her head, the girl immediately shut the open chronicle with a thunderous clap of heavy leather and a thousand old dried pages of medieval monk's calligraphy and bordering. Suddenly, the entire crowd of spaced out figures startled as if a cannon had been fired right next to them. The girl let out a sigh of relief as they all blinked and looked around a moment. Sybbie turned to Marigold who looked puzzled, before turning to her best friend.

"What does that do?" She asked pointing to the astrolabe.

"Yeah, that looks pretty serious …" The girl's boyfriend took the spot next to her.

For a long pause, Sybbie frowned at the crowd of fellow teenagers who all looked up and - as if it was the first time - they noticed the collections of circular bands that were slowly forming back into languid revolutions in orbit of the shimmering crystal core. The girl did a double take at the party of trespassers. For a moment she was going to ask if they had all just taken crazy pills? Had they not just seen one of the craziest and most amazing things ever witnessed in their lives? But then, she stopped herself. For amazement was now mingled with a deep seeded fear of the unknown. The words of consequence and power spoken by a possessed Marigold had unsettled her. The idea that something alien or otherworldly, angelic or not, had taken control of her 'little sister' frightened her to the soul. A cold dread of what could only be described of avoiding a 'close call' creeped down her spine and made her anxious.

"Just, uh, decoration." The Celtic Princess shrugged uneasily. There was a long pause of suspicion from the others before Marigold finally spoke.

"Alright …" Something charming and mischievous played across her ruby lips. "Keep your secrets." She grinned, moving off to look around the room with her hands behind her back.

This left Sybbie with more questions without any answers. Fore perhaps it was a good thing that no one remembered what they had just saw. But more to the point, for the first time, Sybbie began to ponder an understanding. Perhaps, just like she just witnessed, there was a reason that George didn't speak of things he had seen and heard on his adventures. Maybe it was that no one would believe him. But also, that he himself thought it better if he kept his own counsel on the many strange happenstances that he could not yet unravel the wisdoms in. So, instead, the girl watched as the party dispersed about the rounded room looking at other things in wonder and amazement that Sybbie did not seem to see any more in her comfort and familiarity of the place.

Sybbie had started the night angry and spiteful. The girl wished to get even with a young man she loved for leaving her behind, for taking her growing skill as a Sleuth and Adventurer for granted. Then, while showing the astrolabe, she had wanted to prove her worth, to vindicate her own brilliance as an engineer and inventor, to nay say the insecurities George's parting words had given her. But now, in light of the near disaster, Sybbie had allowed the group of fellow teens to wander around the study for a simpler reason.

There were many ideas in the British Empire about George "The Comet" Crawley. He was a scoundrel, a rebel, a traitor, "The deadliest man in the Imperium". Those who did not hate or fear him, often found him 'cracked', with his Cowboy ways, hardboiled American talk, and strange knowledge of worldly and ancient things. And those who loved him had only ever saw the tragedy of his life. They remembered his failures, those he lost and their memories he could never live up to, and his long years away from home in bitter exile. But here, in this study, there was something else that few saw that Sybbie did every day. It was in the astrolabe, in the Downton Chronicle he restored, and in many other things found here. It suddenly, even in her anger, became important to Sybbie to show something to the world, if not to the young man she loved most in it. Yes, there was tragedy and sorrow in George Crawley's life …

But there was also courage, wonder, and great beauty in the things he wrought.

Right by the door there was a suit of antique knight's armor from "The War of Roses". The unique and dented plate had belonged to the very first Lord of the House of Grantham, who had fought on the field of battle for the House of York - "The Black Dragon". Since then it had been passed down from Lord to heir till the fall of the Old Fortress. The silvery sigil of the House of Grantham was dented from lance and flail damaged to a heavy metal shield with a field of navy-blue with silver ridging and outline that it was blazoned upon - held in place by rusted gauntlet. It never failed to make Sybbie smirk to see the usual outback fedora on top of the winged helmet, long navy-blue scarf around its neck, and peacoat of brown beaten leather draped over the shoulder plates whenever the young master was home. Only George Crawley could find and save an antique and sacred suit of armor from the "Old Fortress" on "Spectacle Rock" and use it for his coat rack.

Some might have seen it as disrespectful, but Sybbie knew that it was more a casual comfort that George was known for with those he loved. The informal relationship that the young man had with his family, at all times, was a mark of endearment and familiarity. The same could be said for the lost heirlooms. It was an extension and acknowledgement of being family, a direct descendant of an unbroken line of heirs going back to the "War of Roses". Their Donk would show the thing off as some evidence of superiority, speak of it as if it were part of a collection in a museum, meant for preservation and ennoblement. While George treated the same items with care, but also affectionate familiarity, as one might hand-me-downs from a beloved grandparent. And though Sybbie was no expert, something rather informed her heart that George's everyday use and affinity for the sacred family history would've been deeply appreciated against their Donk's rather braggard showmanship as a haughty symbol.

Upon the opposite wall above the fireplace mantle was a framed flag of tattered silk. It was the Regimental company's standard of the _"Grantham County Volunteers"_ that had been led by Matthew Crawley from "The Battle of Mons" to when the last, purely, English unit made their final stand at Amiens. It was torn and ripped by bullets and harsh French weather. The Union Jack, with faded stitching of the company's name by the hands of Ladies Grantham and Sybil, was ragged and dirty. It was gifted to Matthew Crawley by the War Department in honor of his wedding to Lady Mary. But when Mary inquired why they didn't give it to the Regiment itself, the man delivering the tattered rag simply blinked at the newlyweds, and asked, rather bitterly, "What Regiment?" as he left them.

Lady Mary, judging that her husband would have the same regimental pride as her papa, had it framed. But when she presented it to her husband over the fireplace of their private Downton sitting room, she received a kiss for the thought of it, but the man removed it. Since then, a guilty Matthew, whose injuries had spared him the later annihilation of his entire Regiment, had put it in a trunk in his mother's house. Now it sat above the fireplace, where his son had taken pride in it, even if his father's guilt could not endure it in his time.

There were other things that had caught the outsiders' eyes. Their Great-Grandfather's Confederate Saber was on a stand on the mantle. How a good Jewish Boy from Sleepy Hollow New York ended up riding with JEB Stuart's Calvary for four years? How he met and fell in love with a Colonel's daughter from New Orleans? Or how, together, they built a tin empire? No one would ever quite know. For, the sorrow of his passing had forever rendered Martha Levinson quite unable to talk about it. It remained a great secret from her two children, her three granddaughters, and her Great-Grandson - the only one of her three Great-Grandchildren she had ever gotten to know. Having fled Downton to America at a young age, all the fairly curmudgeonly old woman could say about why she took in George - a wanted outlaw at the time - was all simply mercenary. Indeed, it all came down to this simple fact …

That out of all of her and her husband's countless, snobbish, haughty, and useless descendants, George Crawley had been the only one who had ever shown true spirit.

The rest of the group seemed blown away by the items that George had in his study. They gathered around an oak stand that was meant to hold a world globe. But instead, in the hole and supports, there sat a giant pearl of equal size. It glinted and shimmered with a hypnotizing sparkle while in the lamp light. No one had seen anything like it before, nor could they imagine how many pounds of the shifting white marble of mother of pearl must have lain inside. But most of all, one could only imagine, drool over, how much money it must have been worth.

On a far wall was vaulted a rack that held a collection of unique and ordinate swords. There was a rapier of Spanish steel, Mexican silver, and a faded black leather grip. It was a dueling blade that had once belonged to a Spanish Nobleman in the early nineteenth century California. It seemed to have been used quite a bit by its previous owner, as well as its current one, in tales that do not come into this story.

[("Guide My Sword" - Mark Knopfler)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73PxXl-D7kE)

Another was that of an ancient Samurai Katana that dated back to the Feudal Period of Japan. Of its story Sybbie couldn't say, fore how it came into George's possession was a strange tale of which she only saw the end of. A Japanese man in tattered and antique robes and a large basket like hat had come to Downton Abbey in the night during dinner. He asked for George, the heir of the noble house. And when George came, the man presented the ancient and mystical sword to him. She would never forget how the blade, in the young man she love's hands, glowed a pure and holy blue. Then, the mysterious and venerable warrior demanded that George hold to his oath that was made when they first met long years ago. The next morning, Sybbie was startled awake in her mama's bed by the sound of clashing swords of a fierce duel in the old forest.

They rushed down to see what the sounds of violence had been, But Thomas blocked the library doors to the gardens. Then, after a terrible cry of some Warg of hell, which chilled their family's blood to the core, there was silence. Finally, some long minutes later, from out of the fog, George came walking up the path. His ancient blade point was covered in ash. And there was a gash from another katana that was blooded across his chest. In his hand was the mysterious swordsmen's sheathed weapon. He had shoved it into their Donk's chest unceremoniously in passing and told him that Downton's honor had been upheld. His final instruction was to place the sword somewhere venerable in the manor for it had belonged to the last "Storm Breaker General of the Sun Goddess of Yamatai ". Then, with the magic sword given to him, he walked back to Crawley House alone and sorrowful.

Since that night George revealed very little of his history with the mysterious swordsmen, nor the weapon gifted to him. What the girl knew of the katana since was that the hallowed blade would glow blue in the presence of true and pure evil. Though, Sybbie had yet to see this in action, and was often told by George that he hoped she never would.

Of the unique broad sword that was below the katana on the rack was one that Sybbie had known for many years and was very familiar with, since she was a young girl.

It had a pure black blade of a type of space metal that the rarest of men had ever seen. Upon its chipped and weathered body were runes of Hyborian Age hieroglyphics in greening brass. Its cross guard was inverted and in the shape of falcon wings made of pure gold, as was the handle. Its once ornate pommel bore an ancient ruby core. It seemed a weapon from another time, if not another place entirely from that which anyone else knew. There seemed something distinctly Alien about it, but she couldn't quite say, as it seemed something predating even the first kingdoms of the ancient Egyptian civilizations with a design unlike anything she had ever seen. But the girl had observed that it was much the same way with all of the Hyborian artifacts in George's keeping.

What she knew of it was that George had found it in an ancient tomb on the Upper Nile, and he had been its owner since they were children. Recently, she and their family heard from others - guests at London Dinner Tables during the Season - pieces of the tale. A story about the young apprentice that had accompanied Captain Allan Quartermain and Ms. Mina Murray to Egypt. They, along with an expedition, had gone upriver to rescue a party of young British ladies - including the daughter of the Viceroy - who were taken during a pleasure river cruise.

They were told of this young ranger who had been the only one to escape the ambush of ape-men, who alluded capture when all his fellows had been imprisoned. And it was encamped within the protection of an ancient tomb that no ape-man would approach that he found the skeletal remains of an ancient Hyborian hero who still clung to his famed sword. With honor and determination, the boy paid tribute to the ancient warrior when he took the blade. There, interrupting evil rituals, the youth fought in single combat "Odolwunga 'Giver of Life'" - a villainous African Black Sorcerer in procession of an ancient tablet of evil - to free his companions and the girls. And of that same young boy he was no less vaulted for first slaying the vile "Dununga" 'the Man-Ape', an albino abomination of nature created by the evil bush sorcery of Odolwunga and was to be given by heathen and unholy ceremony, the viceroy's daughter as a mate to make more abominations.

And while these stories were often dismissed as Provincial gossip from the fringes of the Imperium, many found it all quite fascinating and thrilling. This, and many other stories of George's adventures had positively consumed dinning and drawing room talk throughout London that Season. It seemed everyone had some "Comet Story" that they heard here or there, using them like currency. Sure, they didn't like George Crawley - not in the slightest. But cracked or not, now that he had returned, one could not deny that he might have been the most fascinating chaps in England.

And when Sybbie came home from London, she immediately rushed off to Crawley House. Without even saying hello or good day to the young man quietly scribing the translation of an ancient tome in a leather-bound journal, she bolted to the sword rack and took the beastly heavy Hyborian blade in hand. With quirked eyebrow, George watched the girl he loved strenuously swing his sword around in new enthusiasm for an imagination teeming with so many adventures told at tables across their granny's busy Societal schedule. But before the young man could interrogate where the teenage beauty got her narcotics, Sybbie excitedly and bluntly asked George why he had never told her about the amazing tale of Odolwunga and his 'Man-Ape' when they were children.

But the enthusiasm fell in her eyes when George grew incredibly quiet upon hearing the names of his old childhood adversaries after so long. He took the ancient blade that had once belonged to the mightiest of heroes of that age undreamed and placed it back on the rack. Then, he replied only that 'there's a reason'. It was all he would say of the adventure which he remembered much differently than the whimsical tales told by British Colonial Officers and officials to entertain fashionable dinner parties during the London Season.

It wasn't till her father's wedding. It wasn't till dealing with the evil tablet that a simple African fisherman found in the river that corrupted him into the horrible villain "Odolwunga". It wasn't till the Egyptology Professor who accompanied George on the expedition to rescue the young women, who secretly kept the tablet that the young boy told the man to destroy, whose mind was poisoned by its potency for years after losing Lucy Smith's love to Tom Branson. It wasn't till they saw the beast that he turned himself into with its dark powers, that Sybbie truly understood why George did not talk about Odolwunga and his Man-Ape.

Fore, perhaps nothing was quite as it seemed for a boy who ran through an "Abomination of Nature" with a legendary hero's sword.

While at the grandest, luxurious, and fanciest dinner tables in the world, the Lords and Ladies were enraptured by the story of a dashing young hero, swinging into the ruins of a chariot racing arena, with sword in hand, to rescue the daughter of a Marquis. That same boy would remember only the frightened eyes of a sentient being, larger than a man, but no older than a toddler, as it stood towering over him with his sword through its bowels. They never told – at those fancy dinner parties – of the sobbing, the creature crying for its mama as it fell to the dust. They never described how upon its death; the black magic curse fell away. They never explained how the large albino beast shrank and shrank till it could be fit in even the boy's arms. They always said how ugly it was, malformed, and hideous it had been … but they never said how human it looked when it returned to its true form. They never told the part about the wailing screams of the British lady of upper-class who had given birth to the creature. How she ran to the child and cradled it to her breast.

" _Murderer! MURDERHERHER!"_

Those fancy Lords and Ladies at the Grantham table would never know the shrill and deranged howls of a mother that would haunt George Crawley ever afterward.

The last sword on the rack was by no stretch the least. For it was the most elegant and beautiful of weapons ever forged in the girl's eyes. The blade was silvery, crafted and shaped into the likeness of a leaf. Intricate and otherworldly, vine and ivy designs twisted and formed the cross guard and climbed up upon the blade in a mastership of metalwork unseen in the world for many long ages. It was an elegant and sleek weapon, who had seen much war before. Forged by a master craftsman who bore a secret darkness within. A smith who grudged the price a King of old demanded for his autonomy from the fair courts within caverns glittering and shining, in a land sunken under sundering seas of an earth broken and made anew. For many long years the blade was passed down to that tall king's heirs from his glittering ten-thousand caves to the far Western Continent where the Men of the Ancient West became the mightiest of that race of old, and their Kings the greatest of all. And when their Downfall came, poisoned by the foul words of an Evil Sorcerer and enslaved by human envy in defiance of God, that mighty sword was lost. It was sunken upon the altar of a temple dedicated to the Dark Lord built in those evil final days. Millennia passed like faded dreams in the crushing darkness, the world broken and remade, and still it rested within those sunken ruins.

However, in the dwindled and decrypted wheel of endless time, and by mere 'chance', the sword was taken up by a singularly unlikely master. A young boy, on an expedition to the sunken continent, stood at the last, his companions slain about him, in defense of the helpless and beautiful Ms. Mina Murray who was chained to the Dark Lord's unholy altar as sacrifice. Before him stood his foe, Professor James Moriarty, possessed by an evil tribal mask which bore the echo of the same evil sorcerer within. For the first time in thousands of years, the sword of kings, once more was wielded by one of heroic deed and pure of heart. Thus, and ever afterward, it would remain in the hands of the heirs of the House of Grantham, an heirloom of mighty bearing forgotten by the world.

When Sybbie touched the elegant and beautiful sword, she could not describe the feelings that overcame her. It was as if something nostalgic swept over her heart from some power within the blade. It was a voice from long ago, calling to something in her very blood within its song while George wielded it in practice. For a moment, in its sharp ringing music, she could almost see a forest, ancient and untouched, gleaming in the moonlight rays of a spring night wreathed in leaves of gold. There in the distance she saw a maiden, with blue raiment with golden flowers sown in her long raven hair, dancing in the beams of starlight. She was beautiful beyond words, her voice and the blade singing as one in Sybbie's very soul as if it were memory.

Yet, when the girl tried to see her face, all she saw was herself looking back at her.

On the other side of the study was a glass case display, like something out of a museum. Inside was a very strange item indeed. It had the twisting and waving shape of an elongated seashell, but it was made out of a type of metal that was half rusted and still crusted with clinging fossilized coral. It seemed to be some sort of ornate and venerable war helmet taken from the deep depths of the ocean. But it was full of contradictions. Fore it had the seashell appearance of something made during the seventeenth century, an item from a Renaissance painting of mythology. The detail and craftsmanship alone spoke to artisanship unseen, and yet, the age of it seemed to be dozens of centuries before such a time when scientist believed that humanity had mastered the art of metallurgy. But, the dating of such an incredibly crafted item seemed to surpass even antiquity and the classical world itself. It could be said that whatever great mariner captain had dawned such a helmet, had truly lived in a world, a civilization, long lost to the accountancy of man.

They were all items, Pearl, Swords, and War Helm, which puzzled almost everyone that saw them.

Most people knew of George's exploits, many and varied. Yet, the image that most people conjured of George Crawley as the lone wayfarer, the solitary Ranger wandering the wilds, but it flew in the face of any one of these items in his study. Most of which would've gone for millions of dollars by many such collectors. It would also seem impossible that the youth could haul that pearl with him all through the American Southwest and the foothills of Northern Mexico. Or on his odyssey from New York to New Orleans, with a month in a Memphis Labor Prison, working on a chain gang, in between. But there were a few who knew of George's mentor and master, an old princely science pirate, who had taught George Crawley - since he was a small boy - the sword, intellectual discipline, and many other things of the world lost to time.

Weeks before George returned to England, they spoke of a great beast that had sunk the German Freighter "The Empress Victoria" and stole her ill-borne cargo, meant to fund Lady Mary's wedding to a secret Nazi Spymaster with a world-famous movie star persona. It had been the same beast that had been notorious in '66 through '68, having sunk a French Republic Warship and damaged an American Union Ironside. Yet, there were only few that knew that the beast had been the mad Science Pirate's clockwork submersible, old world in appearance and elegance, but futuristic beyond the comprehension of intellectuals for decades to come.

But knowing George as a student of the old exiled Maratha Prince's, and member of his international crew, Sybbie was aware that there were many adventures that George had been on while aboard that pirate vessel for many years that he didn't speak of. Whether by sworn word, or simply, because, he'd sound crazed to speak them aloud. But the pearl, swords, and the ancient mariner's helm was a record of the validity to the things he had seen and done _twenty-thousand_ _leagues under the sea_.

The girl watched as Marigold's imagination was captured by something on the wall. She knew the girl had not recently dared to step foot into Crawley House since George's return, not knowing that the elegant ballerina had always dreamed of herself as the lady of the house one day. Her slender white hand had picked a frame off the peg. Her emerald eyes studied it with interest and wonder. Behind the glass lay an old and tattered map. It was a very ancient, faded, leather bound chart which had a continent the size of Australia at its center.

The continent in question was shaped like a ruddy five-pointed star, with a gigantic single peaked mountain at it's very center. However, the landmass of question did not resemble any currently known to Earth. Upon it were elegant and strange runes that matched those on a band around the crown of the seashell helm of the great captain. From what the beauty could tell, the runes were meant to signify star positions and latitudes in the near faded navy-blue ink. Marigold also noticed that these same markings were also carved around the edges of several bands of the Astrolabe. It seemed to her, and quite correctly, that there was a link between the runes upon the helmet, the chart, and upon the astrolabe. All of which bore the position of a landmass long sunken under sundering seas. There in that fallen place, overrun by evil's temptation, a great adventure in which much consequence to the very destiny of the House of Grantham was tied. Fore much sorrow was mingled with the wonder of the great Island of the Sea Kings of the Ancient West who is now only accounted by the musings of Plato in antiquity.

"Don't touch that!"

Everyone stopped what they were doing when Sybbie's regally polished accent gave sting in admonishment of her boyfriend. The future Cornish Duke, who was 'slumming it' currently with a Great-Uncle's Gloucestershire Baronetcy, only smirked at the distress in the Heiress's voice. It came out of her automatically when she heard the crinkle of parchment being handled roughly. When she turned, she saw the dark auburn colored Head Boy of his year at Eton was roughly turning over an ancient page of foreign text off her Uncle Matthew's old desk. With an alarmed snap, she told her boyfriend to put it down and not to touch anything. He only chuckled, pretending to almost drop the dusty and ancient parchment before he tossed it on the desk. The boy took the girl in his arms, kissing her neck, whispering in her glossy curls to relax. But she only glared harshly. The young Baron had not realized that he had just fooled around with the only account in existence that detailed an encounter of Jewish Merchants and Chinese Traders on the Silk Road, just outside of the boarders of the Crusader County of Tripoli, in the 1170s.

George would kill both of them had he seen the Boy handling something so precious with no care whatsoever.

The entire study was covered in research. There were ancient leather-bound books of beautifully Gothic drawn and written Chronicles of an Order of Teutonic Monks that were the size of battleship plating. On end tables were ancient Jewish scrolls in Aramaic that spoke of ancient religious rituals that fell out of favor after the days of Caesar in Judea and the birth of Christ. And on the floor were stacks of pages, upon crusted pages, of the Monk accounts from the Spanish wars against the Moorish invaders during "The Reconquista" of the Iberian Peninsula.

Among the chronicles and ancient parchment were charts and maps. They were secret tunnels under coastal Mid-East cities drawn up by Monk's during sieges on the Crusader Trail, Navigational charts of the Pilgrim routes drawn by the Templar Order of Knights, and an old map of Northern Spain on the border of Basque, drawn by Jewish Merchants. They were scattered all over the leather sofa and twin tall back chairs by the fireplace. They were stacked on the rug, unrolled on the desk, and shuffled on the table by the window.

There were open books that were stacked on the desk, comprehensive guides and timelines for the young man about an item of some great importance that fled from the Muslim invaders in the last days of Eastern Empire Judea to the Germanic City of Prague. Nearly two centuries later the item accompanied the Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick "Barbarossa" when he took the Crusade to once more reclaim Jerusalem from Saladin. There, the item was lost at "The Battle of Acre". Though, it was George's reading through Spanish Chronicles at the behest of the "Blind Turk", which the item briefly resurfaced, in possession of a Jewish woman who had fallen in love with a Christian Knight who had been felled by a Moorish lance.

There, the story ended, and Sybbie's knowledge of George and the Nazi rivalry to find the location of "The Lost Knight's Tomb" began.

[ _("Very Old Friends" – Howard Shore)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp7vArQycnM)

Yet, while everyone else was taken by the interesting items and relics in George's study, Sybbie saw something else entirely. While the boy might have redecorated from the tastes of his 'Gram's', there was something still familiar to those who knew Crawley House before. Though filled with trophies and ancient texts of Crusades and Jewish ritual, the warmth and homely hearth that was created and fostered by Matthew and Isobel Crawley remained. Fore kindness and generosity could seep into the very foundations of a house just as easily as evil and darkness. And, though, Matthew Crawley had been dead these last sixteen years, and Lady Merton was lost in a fog of memories of many long yesterdays, their mark would always be left, indelibly, upon the old stones of the homely house right next to the ruined church and overgrown graveyard. There remained a cozy and comfortable feeling to the rustic home surrounded by lovely roses upon ivy trellises.

For many long years had it been a congregating place for the Crawley Family in times of informality and casual enjoyment, with Isobel as host. If Downton was a beacon of class and elegance for Yorkshire, then Crawley House represented and remained a homely and wholesome comfort of safety and warmth to the Noble House of Grantham. Even in bitter feelings between George and the Crawley family as a whole, he still would not break with tradition set down by an admirable father and grandmother. As such, even in his deep anger, he would never turn away any one within his family who wished to taste a reprieve of the world within the safety of this special house which no darkness could seemingly touch.

That was part of the reason that Sybbie had grown incredibly tight in the growing minutes. In sight were these young and fashionable strangers, who she had brought, that were standing and gawking at things that were not for their eyes. The girl knew every inch of this house and had such a connection to everything as it was. She knew of the rug that they all stood upon, the same rug that She, George, and Marigold used to play on when they were small, quietly listening to Isobel or Dickie read to them of the adventures of Peter Rabbit or Winnie the Pooh. There were the two leather chairs that sat by the fireplace. They were the very chairs, the very spot, by the same fireplace, where her daddy had convinced her Uncle Matthew, long ago, that he'd never be happy with anyone else as long as Mama walked the earth. It was the cloud like softness of the sofa that many a childhood and very recent lazy Sunday afternoon was spent curled up with George, spooned tightly and snuggly in his arms, as they napped together to the patter of the rain on the windows. This wasn't some place of fascination and mystery to be poked and prodded. This was as close to a treasured and sacred place as there could ever be to Sybil Branson.

Then, most important of all, was the triple folding picture frame that Marigold had in her hand. Her features were so beautiful and elegant in the dim light as she smiled softly. Sybbie paced behind her cousin, wrapping her up by the waist in a sisterly hug of deep love, nuzzling her hair with her nose. The blonde ballerina responded by leaning her head back against her sister's shoulder comfortably. There was an affectionate snuggle of their foreheads together as they both stared at the glass frames in the girl's hands.

On the far left was a picture of their Uncle Matthew in his army uniform. He was the epitome of the young hero of Downton - off to Belgium to fight the Huns - with his fierce eyes and determined stalwart face. In the center picture was a wedding photo of Uncle Matthew and Mama. They weren't supposed to be smiling, but the joy of the day, of the moment, was too powerful to ever heed what the annoyed photographer was saying to two people more happily in love than anyone would ever know. And on the far right was a picture of four people, only three visible. It was taken in front of the village church, just a four-minute walk, and two-minute jog, from where they stood in the study. Three young women, lovely and smiling, stood at the church doors by the tree. Both her mummy and Mama wore loose spring dresses of lace with gorgeous hats, her mummy heavily pregnant. Lady Sybil and Lady Mary both flanked her Aunt Edith, who was in a silk wedding gown complete with veil and flowers held to her breast. It was a rare photo of a dark day in the life of Lady Edith Crawley, but still, she might have grudged an old man's cold feet, but she could never hate the last picture ever taken of the Crawley Sisters together and happy.

In truth, Sybbie had loved the old picture on George's desk so much, because, it was the only one in existence of her and her mummy together.

Eventually, her and Marigold's fond admiration of their three mamas was interrupted by a disagreeable noise. Both girls glared, Marigold in curiosity, Sybbie in straight annoyance that was about to boil over. In Marigold's boyfriend's hand was a leather-bound journal. What made Sybbie quite ticked off was that she knew, for a fact, that the journal in question was always hidden away. This, to Sybbie, meant that the future Lord of an estate near Lakeland had been rooting through George's things. The young polo champion was flipping through the journal that had the adventurer's notes, copied from old monks' manuscripts, as well as sketches of regions of Northern Spain and Old Crusader Fortresses in Mandatory Palestine. But the thing that the boys were going through, along with the journal, was a thick tome chronicling gothic drawings and depictions of a beastly thing of nightmares. Meanwhile, others were looking over very frail pages that had been smuggled out of Germany.

On these entries were a medieval Rabbi's comprehensive sketches of human limbs, broken apart and studied in detail. It was a diagram of how these parts of the dead could be stitched together to create something new and utterly terrifying. These studies showed a drawing of something frightening, fowl, and utterly ungodly in both sight and turn of mind. But on the final sheet were a collection of ancient Jewish symbols in Aramaic that surrounded the drawing of an ornate chalice that was crowned with the mark of King Solomon upon it. In the Gothic pages of the Teutonic tome were depictions of a large and beastly figure of demonic origins. In his long gangling clutches were drawings of medieval sergeants and Teutonic Knights with bloody swords and lances that could not slay the beast. Always in the background was the same Rabbi that stood protectively in front of the Jews of Prague, and in his hands, he held aloft the Chalice.

And ever upon the creature's brow was the Mark of Solomon.

The group of young peers gathered around to groan and macabrely joke of the things found in the medieval chronicles and on the Rabbi's notes. That was till the research was all grabbed out of their hands by a suddenly rancorous Sybbie. To them, to these boys not even out of school, it seemed an odd and ghoulishly fun exploration of what the mighty George Crawley studied in his free time. But to a girl, who knew better, what they were holding was absolutely dangerous. The Nazi Ahnenerbe had already killed for the research that was being used to try and get a cheap laugh out of Marigold to show off. In that moment, Sybbie realized how gravely dangerous her blunder had been, bringing these competitive, snobbish, imbeciles into George's study. Especially, when one of them, eventually, will start spreading the word at Oxford and Eton of what they saw in the famed George Crawley's study.

She ordered all of them, including Marigold, out. But to the girl's temper they only laughed and joked as teenage boys tended to do in groups, especially when they riled up a young beauty such as Sybil Branson. They were still giggling to themselves when the foul tempered Celtic Princess swatted each of them, hard, in the back of the head in turn, demanding them to go wait in the sitting room. Marigold escorted each one of them out, apologetically looking toward a seething Sybbie as they exited the study and into the hallway. When they were gone, the girl stopped and looked at the notes and conclusions that even she had never seen before.

For the life of her, Sybbie had never been quite sure what George had wanted with this "Grail of Prague" in the first place. He was rather secretive about it, not even Jonah or 'Lead Belly' Charlie, knew what, exactly, George was after. Like their 'cases' around England, the girl had been convinced that George was just doing something to kill time. She had figured that after years of living the sort of life that her best friend had that it would be impossible to retire from that kind of adrenaline and danger. And Sybbie was fine with it, so long as he brought her with him and included her in all his plans. After their last case together, in the exhilarating high of outwitting someone to grand conclusion, the girl was convinced that she, someday, would go to Spain with him on the hunt for the Sacred Chalice.

A part of her was afraid to leave the relative safety of her posh life in Grantham County and London to go to a place as dangerous as war torn Spain. Yet, she had already bought the best Spanish Language textbook money could and was asking more and more for George to take her out to shoot guns. To her it wasn't strange that she never pondered the 'why' of all of this. After all, she had stopped asking for reason in anything George Crawley did these days. But for the first time, reading his notes, she began to get a picture of what motivated her best friend and life-long partner.

She flipped through page after page of notes on the history, lore, and legends pertaining to "The Mark of Solomon" and "The Grail of Prague". There were laminated pictures ripped from reference books of the Oxford Library, and sketches of Templar tapestries from Scottish Castles they had visited a few months ago. They were set into the section of the journal that dealt with the alchemy of resurrection. In it, she saw a sketch that came from a Templar tapestry, which somehow clicked everything into place for the first time.

In it was a mounted knight with a red shield that depicted a golden cross crowned in thorns rising forth from a split black tree. The scene was that of a Saracen Prince whose lance impaled through the Knight's chest in battle. Then, next, was that of a beautiful young maiden of Jewish origins kneeling in front of the fallen Knight. Floating above her outstretched hands was held aloft a silver chalice in a ring of ethereal light that she used to save him. However, the corresponding scene showed the Saracen Prince kidnapping the Jewish Maiden. And finally, the image that made it all connect for the teenage girl was the final scene at the bottom of the page. The Knight was walking over a large fiery chasm, overhead, on the other side of the fissure, was winged bat like creatures that guarded the young maiden that lay under a death shroud. However, the creatures seemed to flee in sight of the Knight. Fore floating above his outstretched hands was the chalice, wreathed in ethereal light, as he walked through the long dark of death to rescue the woman he loved from its cold clutches.

A chill went down her spine as she flipped to the last filled page in the leather journal. It was a detailed drawing of the chalice copied from the Rabbi's notes, the Mark of Solomon, and several other Aramaic symbols littered the body of the silver grail. These, unlike the others, were drawn from George's own hand. She wished she didn't, because, it frightened her so. But slowly, inch by inch, her head turned from the open leather book past the rounded study room of Crawley House. Sybbie's eyes stared right through the wall, through the stone privacy perimeter around the house, and past the church gate. In her mind she could see it, the Downton graveyard. Her hands shook at the whispers of surety in her conscious of what her heart and soul told her was to be true. There were plenty of people, loved ones long lost before their time, which lay in the overgrown crypts tangled in ivy and neglect.

The breath from the teenage girl seemed to be stolen from her very breast at the thought, the ambition, of the man she love's crusade. Her eyes transfixed in the very direction of the graveyard with the knowledge of what George's intentions with this artifact were. For so long she had her theories. She thought it a noble cause to keep it out of the hands of Himmler and his Nazi fanatics. She thought it all good fun at the prospect of joining George on one of his amazing and whirlwind adventures that enraptured her and so many during the season. But there was no way, in her own mind, that she ever thought it was possible that George was planning what she now knew he had been with the relic …

She understood that out of all the tragedies that had befallen their family, it was George who suffered most from what was missing.

And every night, across the village from the regal elegance of a manor house's lit dinners filled with finery and young love, a figure sat alone in his study, long brooding on the deep torment of poisonous memories as he sat in his father's chair by the fire. The shadows of flames hid eyes that had seen the many mistakes and failures that ever play on and on in the devil's theater of the mind during the darkest of the pre-dawn hours. That was why he was doing this, why he was hunting for "The Grail of Prague". It wasn't for fortune or glory, to keep it from the Nazis. It was, because, after all these years, George Crawley agreed with his family that he was a poor replacement for what was missing. And so, he'd use the Chalice to return to the House of Grantham that which had been stolen …

He'd take up the last Arthurian Quest to return to his family all the lost souls he had failed to live up too.

Meanwhile, in the study, Marigold and the young chaps did what young people did best. Things that which would annoy their host had he been there. They picked up things that they weren't supposed to touch. They pushed and kicked one another in boyish roughhousing, and they chased one another around the sitting room, using Reginald Crawley's old lounging chair as obstacle in a game that his grandson would annoyingly call "grab ass". The young ballerina was generally more disciplined than her cohorts, but a girl of fifteen was easily swayed by the laughter and jovial spirit of boys her own age. And so, shameful as she would look back on it, she partook in the flirtatious adolescent fun. She played out exactly the mood of the party, by being chased after by every boy in the room. That was, except for one.

Sybbie's boyfriend, the future Duke, was rather put off. He had no love for the way the girl he loved had dressed him down, or of her attitude. There was a general feeling that he was trespassing somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. And it was not the house, but the intrusion upon some sacred place that wasn't for him. It wasn't exactly possessiveness that drove his feelings, but he'd admit to a certain need to be shared with in terms of many things of his girlfriend's life. But being here, in Crawley House, put him on edge. It was why he was coarse and rough with what he handled, why he showed no respect to the things that were not his. There was a crimson streak of jealousy to his attitude of such a place filled with queer things.

It was true of all young men in love that they wished for a certain possession of the girls that stole their hearts. So, it was only a back building of mistrust over the weeks of being informed that Ms. Sybil Branson was not home, but at her brother's house, and that she wouldn't be home till late-morning Monday. But, then, she would walk back down to that same house every morning she didn't sleep over to eat breakfast, shower, and dress. In the meantime, he had such plans for the two of them, wholesome and otherwise. But the girl remained that what she did with George was just more important than whatever he and their friends had planned for the weekend. And it drove her boyfriend to the very fringes of violent madness.

Fore, it was quite impossible to explain how much Sybil meant to him, to all of them.

One only had to see her at the country dance within the stone barn at Yew Tree Farm. She was a girl so young and full of fire, with long glossy raven curls and demure azure eyes. Every boy there was drawn to her like moths to the flame that was deep within such a spirit that afternoon. She had been there with her two cousins, Ms. Marigold, and Lady Victoria. But even then, with the golden Marigold in company, that day, that very hour, belonged to the beauty in her sun dress and shining pearls. The fiddles and pipes seemed to be drawn to three dancing girls who made a ring together, laughing and hopping to the music. They were the soul of contentment unseen in such times as these. Yet, there was not bitterness in the sight of such lovely gems of Downton Abbey filling a tenant's celebration with their laughter. Instead, it was taken as a sign, a living and breathing ray of hope in the county. George Crawley had come again, 'The Prince across the Water', and when he took control of Lady Mary and Lord Grantham's debt on the Estate, suddenly the county taxes dropped. A lowering of Lady Mary's taxes by decree of Downton's new creditor didn't seem like much to anyone else, but to the tenant farmers and villagers, any lighter burden seemed like a cause of celebration in these hard times. And to every one of them there that day, there had never been a more lovely sight than those three young ladies in the throes of joy unseen around those parts in so long.

But then - as was the temperament of Yorkshire weather - there came a sudden and heavy downpour that fell through the cracked stone barn at Yew Tree, whose roof was in disrepair. From most, there was a groan to the sudden laughing outrage of being soaked. But as everyone moved off for some sort of cover, older women going to clean off the tables and save the festivities meager food, a shot of black hair and clinging silk rushed over to the band. They were surprised when the scatter of coin was thrown at them. They might have thought young Ms. Sybil crazy if they hadn't gotten a good look at her. Her black curls were soaked as she slicked them back, while her demure eyes were alight with a certain mischief which was almost audible in her breathy little giggle. The girl bit her bottom lip, expressing a charm that melted mortal men while she twisted her hips in anticipation of their agreement to her wild terms. In sight of such youthful beauty and spirit, they found that they'd be the crazy ones to not honor, at least, one request. Suddenly, just as everyone was about to leave, the band of pipe, drum, and fiddle struck up again with a lively jig.

Sybbie's soaked black ringlets bounced on top of her head as her clinging wet turquoise sun dress flashed like a beacon that drew attention to her. With a bite of her lip of pure audacity, the angel lifted her skirts, her milky ankles and feet kicked off her shoes while she began dancing in the summer downpour. Everyone watched, dumb struck at first, but then, slowly, a deep admiration caught them with every smile and giggle of the girl's bare feet in the golden hay.

A mischievous grin of pearl teeth was shown on her face as she boldly hopped on a nearly empty table. There was a gasp of surprise and cheers as the girl moved her feet with heavy thumps on its base, water splashing everywhere. There was a roar of laughter when the teenage girl, with the excuse of making more room, kicked an especially large pumpkin at a group of old men who had been sitting in the corner, leering a little too long at the underage girls. Her Cerulean eyes, filled with light and joy, flicked to the string band to match her energetic movements to the jig they were playing. Her commanding presence was rewarded by the musicians taking their cue from her movements, matching her pounding steps as the crowd urged her on with a rhythmic clap to the music and whooping. The girl was completely drenched, but she revealed in it as if the raindrops were a baptism, cleansing her of the sins of a past right on her heels. In that rainy afternoon she was reborn into something new, something unburdened, and so very lovely.

There was something humming and glowing, like a gilded harp, about the gem of Lord and Lady Grantham's crown when it was all over.

But as a crowd began to form around her, mostly suitors looking for the teenage girl's hand for the next dance, the young beauty slipped away. Sullen eyes followed the ray of light and object of their swollen hearts to where her cousins stood. Giggling, the girl pecked both on the cheek. She asked, in a pant, if they were all watching. The teenage girl was completely wet, her chest heaving under the constrictive silk material that clung to her form as if she were naked. Her cousins quirked their eyebrows as they flicked their gaze over the girl's creamy shoulders toward a congregation of young men watching them. They couldn't hide the infectious impish grins when they confirmed they were. "Good!" Sybbie had giggled, then, taking Marigold and Rachel's hands, she absconded with them without another word. Leaving the young men with broken hearts, they all watched the very "Star of the County Grantham" flee, when all they prayed for was to ever be in her presences till Judgment Day itself.

How does one simply explain having seen what the Head Boy had? How does one not understand that, after such a display of vigor and perfection, they were but a slave to such longing to be near her at all times? Yet, the chiefest of those who did not understand such things was the very princess that his heart had sworn faithfulness forever. He had tasted her lips, had taken her in his arms, and loved her with all of his soul. But still he came only in second to this place and its master. George Crawley had become a dark and ominous cloud over such a budding countryside romance of young love. His presence was wilting the bloom of their flowering future together.

And worst of all insults, was that he had yet to even lay eyes on George Crawley since he returned.

Sure, he had heard all about the Adventurer who fought Mexican Revolutionaries, Cultist, and even a Necromancer in New Orleans - If Lady Hexham was to be believed. But he was yet to see him at all. It was mostly why he pushed so hard to come here, to see it, see this place that his love goes. He wanted to inspect such a place that he was not allowed to follow her to at any time. Yet, he didn't understand it, not in the least. It looked much as one would expect of a rustic countryside home to look. Perhaps one decorated by the apprentice of Captain Allan Quartermain, granted that he was one of George Crawley's mentors, yet still, the appeal of this Jane Austin relic he could not understand. Yet, even under the weight of gentlemanly manner and order, drilled into him by his Granny and mama, there was still a deep seething of hate for everything in the home, especially toward the one who owned it.

It was unavoidable to hear, to ponder, the rumors that had always persisted about the two, Sybil Branson and George Crawley. For the longest time the Head Boy had dismissed such horrible talk as the cheap gossip of other suitors that could not wrangle such a fiery and independent heart such as their Celtic Princess. But now that he was completely in her power, he felt the sting whose poison conjured such damning rumors. If it wasn't the house, then surely it must be the man. It was a dark and dangerous route to go down, especially for one so deeply devoted to the girl. But, as was all young love, the anger and mistrust were linked so deeply to all the chains of passion and faith. It wasn't unheard of, nor was it particularly rare either, not for people like them. Those who share nurseries long enough, get curious of one another. Those raised in countryside seclusion, restricted to the interaction of the county but to those few of their own station, had but a meager pick of 'playmates'. It also was not unfamiliar that one gone for many long years, as George Crawley had been, might confuse longing affection of a small girl as something entirely different from a beautiful young woman that he returned to find.

It was like a dark undertow of a sinful current that took him. Soon, the young Viscount, who claimed to love Ms. Sybil Branson with the upmost purity, had convinced himself, rather quickly, that his girlfriend was having sex with her adopted brother and cousin. The torrent of adolescent jealousy had swallowed him whole, as it had others before him. It was in the wounded pride that he suffered months ago at the hands of Jonah Robinson, having been stared down and flinching. It was in the months afterward of feeling smaller, less a male of renown, having been told a story of New Orleans that may or may not have been true. But it didn't matter when the young beauty he loved so, believed it to be.

Now, he stood in this very man's house, only to have been crossly rebuked not once, but twice. Sybbie's sharp tongue making the sounds as if she were the Lady of Crawley House, unhappy that they were touching her husband's things. It was more than he could bear, to think of her in that way, some Madeline to George Crawley's Roderick. A place holder for a cracked figure with the beastly and ungodly things he had in his study. The only thing he kept thinking was, 'he had to know'. He had to know if it were true, if his Sybbie was playing the harem slave girl to an uncouth youth who spent too many years with American Negros and Cowboys. He had to know about his princess and an intrepid adventurer who seemed to have forgotten that he was an Englishman of great standing in society.

As Marigold giggled and jerked away from the hands trying to catch her, the stern young chap slipped out of the sitting room. His feet were muted on the long hallway carpet as he snuck past the study door that was cracked open, a sliver of golden lamp light spilling into the corridor, touching the corner fringe of the hall rug. He saw the shadow of Sybbie who was looking out the window at the midnight gardens, sadness and conflict in her eyes as she cradled George's journal to her bosom. It only boiled her boyfriend's blood even more. A proper Lady would never even go near such things as that to which she held as if it were her lover's favor.

As he crept down the dark hallway, he saw frames that lined the wall. In the old days the halls were decorated with paintings taken from the Downton catalog of antiques and collections. But under George's ownership and management, those paintings had been stacked and dumped in the Downton lobby along with all the busts and statuettes. In their stead, and rather to come to needle the intruder, were framed articles from newspapers and magazines. In each frame was a headline in bold that claimed that a jewel thief had been caught. Another celebrated that a kidnapped Debutante was returned to her family. One framed cover of "The Sketch" with Executive Editor: Laura Edmunds billed as writer, assured the public that The Queen of the Nile's sarcophagus bad been recovered, and the ring of Profiteers of rare antiquities had been exposed. But the one by the stairs claimed that a confidence man, pretending to be a butler, ready to abscond with the daughter of a Marquis and the artifact of King Henry III's Helmet was captured at the Grand Hotel in Liverpool. There was proof of such a timely collar in the picture that corresponded with the headline in the frame.

In it was a handsome older man with salt and pepper hair. He had a fox like face and was in disguise as a hotel bellhop. He seemed to be concussed from a blow to the jaw, lying half buried in white sacks within the Hotel Laundry drop. On either side of the man were two youths that were presenting him like he was a prize kill on a safari hunt. On one side was a grinning Sybbie posing heroically with a King of England's helmet in her long silk elbow gloves. She was the vision of glamor, dressed in a gorgeous form fitting silver satin evening gown, with matching jewels, and glossily styled waves. On the other side, wearing his peacoat of beaten leather, collar upturned, same blue Henley shirt under a white button down, and denim trousers. George was smirking in amusement of the man he had just knocked down three floors through the laundry chute, leaning cockily on the corner of the laundry shaft on a raised forearm.

It seemed every frame down the hall and up the stairs was a newspaper or magazine article that detailed George and Sybbie's exploits in England as consulting sleuths for hire. Each headline, article, and picture were a testament of two friends, practically twins, trying to escape both their dark pasts through any distraction they could find. And somewhere in the collection of frames chronicling their adventures together, there was a bond between two broken people that grew from unshakable as young children, to completely unbreakable for the rest of their lives. But all the girl's boyfriend saw in them was just more evidence that this warm and homely, ivy covered, country home, wasn't just George Crawley's lair.

It had become 'their' place together.

He wanted to go up the steps, wanted to go to the bastard's bedroom. A part of him didn't want to see it, and part of him _had_ to see it. It was the gentlemanly part of him that spoke against the darkness, which said he didn't know what to expect to see. But the most powerful part of himself, the darkest part that drove him, drew a picture of tangled sheets and a comforter half slid off the bed. All evidence that exposed the signs of passionate love making of a degenerate and his love slave. On the bedroom rug he would find the girl's silky brassier and matching knickers. It didn't matter that George had been gone for two weeks, or that he had a housekeeper that was only out for the weekend. To him, the Head Boy was convinced that he'd find evidence of George and Sybbie's illicit and abominable affair of forbidden lust. The dark impulses of jealousy and sheer hate turning tumultuously like a stormy sea in his faltering heart.

[ _("Terrible Fate" – Theophany)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-BeEIoIQcs)

He couldn't explain, couldn't say, why he had become so angry all of the sudden. But he only knew that it was George's fault, that he hated that man, that he couldn't think of anything else but hurting him, the way he hurt the Head Boy. How many times had he thwarted him? How many times had he spoiled all of his plans?

_**He had her, he had the ruby, and, by God, he could taste it. And then the accursed Dunedain got a second wind. He knew he should've taken another host. Moriarty was getting too old. He was good when he had political power, but the moment he lost it after Amantha, he should've clung to another, a big and strapping figure that could've kept up, outfought the Heir of the Princess of Nightingales in a duel …** _

Suddenly, in a flash, the boy had no idea why he was thinking those thoughts. In truth, he had no idea what he was thinking at all. Suddenly, all he knew was that he was filled to the brim with an uncontrollable flash of cruelty, a sick pleasure that took over him in a wave of the darkest of anxiety. He shuttered in its beating and pounding through his veins. He had the sensation, the compulsion, to hit something, even himself, in this new surge of power. It was something that he had never felt before. He was so very frightened, and yet, overcome with such exhilaration that he could not keep the smile from his face. There was a torrent of pain inside, but it all felt so very … pleasurable, all at the same time. Suddenly he felt something behind him. He turned quickly from the bottom of the steps to the wall …

There, for just a second, he thought he saw the shadow of … a _scorpion_?

The feelings, the strange rush of exhilaration and adrenaline, the sheer delight of such violent urges of hate and lust were all pulling him, like a string tied around his finger, toward something in the house. He didn't know how he knew, but he just did. In every other step, he thought, for a moment, that there was something just ahead of him. It was just teasing him of its presence. He didn't see it, couldn't quite make it out, but heard the soft rattle of floorboards a step or two ahead of him. It was like the sound of fingers running just a touch across the walls. He did not want to follow, but the more he did, the greater the reward was for obeying the surging instincts inside him. It was not a long walk, just to the back of the hall, a servant's storeroom.

He jumped in pain, as if his hand was burnt, when he turned the knob. He could've sworn that it was heated to just a touch under melting. But then, he moved swiftly and threw it open. It was a slow and loud creak, the very heavy whitewashed door meeting air resistance. He heard something rattling and tapping on the other side of the door. He thought it would be electrical wire, or some other sort of clever trap to keep intruders out. Instead, he was puzzled to find that it was, in fact, a Catholic rosary that was looped over the doorknob. It looked ancient and worn, given to the current owner by an old nun in a rundown chapel of an old Spanish Mission on the Nueces River in South Texas. The young man smirked to himself, his smile ever widening. But when he touched it, he felt as if he had grasped an exposed wire of an electrical line. He let out a grunt, and then angrily he smacked the door. The word "Whore" was low and primal in its guttural inference at the old nun. But still, under such an alien influence, he did not touch the rosary again.

Slowly, he walked down a flight of old and creaking steps that whined painfully under his tread. He followed them down into a small storage room under the stairs. There, he saw that the room seemed bare, except, strangely, for a one old china cabinet that seemed out of place. It was tall, as big as a wardrobe. There was a fairytale like romanticism in the rose and vine work carved into the old cherry wood. Dusty glass panes inlaid into the wood were blacked out by paper stuffed inside. It looked like an antique, something passed down from two hundred years' worth of dowries, certainly very valuable at any level. He couldn't figure out why exactly such a centerpiece of any Aristocrat's inherited furniture collection would be hidden away such as this exquisite piece. But then he noticed something else upon the wood and glass.

The Baroque piece of craftsmanship was littered, graffitied, with strange white strips of adhesive with equally strange oriental symbols. It was Japanese Kanji script that was written and blessed by a Shinto Priest. He didn't know what they said, but there was aura of containment to the feeling of it. Suddenly, instinctively, the Head Boy looked back to the rosary that hung off the inner doorknob, and even spotted an antique Celtic crucifix that was hammered into the wall opposite the china cabinet. Between the Catholic idols and the Shinto protection strips, it would seem that whatever George Crawley was hiding down here, he believed it to be something otherworldly.

Which was why it had to be something good.

As the future Duke approached the china and silver cabinet, he noticed something rather odd about the oriental religious strips. They were browning and blackening, some of them even sizzling. They looked and smelt as if someone had been slow roasting the pieces of sticking paper for months with a lighter. As he stepped forward, he halted when the main and largest prayer note seemed to burn off, slowly floating in ashy pieces at his feet. It gave him pause at every level. Never before had he felt so frightened, and yet so lustful for the contradiction that flowed through him.

Lady Rose Aldridge suckling his manhood in her mouth wouldn't be half as exhilarating as it was stepping at the precipice of whatever led him to this room. And yet, he looked back at the rosary and crucifix that stood sentry guard of the cabinet in order to stop whatever was inside from getting out. Even the very nature of the house, its legacy of righteous purity was suppressing what was inside, making it quite muted under the weight, and ever dampening its power to a murmured little whimper.

And yet, it was by the ill chance of fate had such dark power been given one last chance at a viable liberator who had so hatefully trespassed upon the hallow ground of its dungeon. The feelings, oh the feelings in his very blood were so richly textured in dark pleasure, with just a taste of what was able to be dripped out ever so slightly through the tight bulkheads of its impenetrable prison. The boy's body was filled with a roaring noise that bore all his emotions and deepest desires naked to the dark. He told himself, and if not he, then whatever was inside, that true satisfaction would come from taking it out of this house, it came from peaking. He would only be satisfied when he knew …

And, by God, did the jealous young aristocrat have to know what was inside.


	4. Part II

In the sitting room of Crawley House, the chasing and roughhousing of teenagers had stopped. The 'guests' were now giving a second or third look at the items inside. A couple of teenage boys proclaimed that the painted eyes of General George Washington, crossing the Delaware, followed them wherever they stood in the room. Others were admiring the framed flag of the premiere chapterhouse of the Ku Klux Klan.

It was the very original banner of one of the oldest chapters of the KKK, the prize of the paramilitary organization. It had flown ever in pride over their rituals and parades down many city streets for nearly hundred years. Now, it sat in the sitting room of an English Regency country cottage as a trophy of the only person who had ever openly outwitted, battled, and defeated the oldest order of the Ku Klux Klan on their own home turf.

A letter, written by President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself, and signed by Twenty-Eight Democratic Congressmen in Washington DC, had been sent to Downton Abbey. The content of such a letter had denounced the idea of the pride of a Democratic Party Institution reduced to some trophy hanging in an outlaw's sitting room in a foreign land. They angrily demanded that the young rebel return their prized and vaulted symbol of culture and heritage. But when Lord Grantham placed the presidential letter into his Grandson's hand - while the rest of the gathered family looked on with great interest while at tea - the boy only skimmed it quietly. Then, crumbling it up without a whim, he chucked it into the Downton Library's fireplace to his family's raised eyebrows at the action to a signed letter from the American President. But George only, languidly, paced out of the library without saying a word to anyone.

Afterward, they heard that George had the flag framed.

The group of teens had also gathered around an ornate sword that sat upon the mantle of the fireplace. The long blade was smoky and curved, scrolls of ancient Persian runes were written on the Damascus Steel. The handle was inlaid with gold and brass, with a ruby pummel that had a golden engraving of a family crest. This sword was not just deadly, but a work of art, valuable, heirloom of an ancient and prominent noble blooded family. This weapon, above all things, would not have been brought forth nor used for no purpose. And it was to take the life of George "The Comet" Crawley that it had been drawn atop a runaway train in Newport Rhode Island. There, it had been wielded by Alemdar Pamuk, the bastard son of Kamal Pamuk. He had come to avenge his family's honor and to put an end to "The Comet" once and for all.

A bounty had been placed on George's head since the very day he was born. For his weight in gold, a Princess of Iran - married to the cousin of the Last Imperial Sultan of the Ottoman Empire - would see justice be done upon Lady Mary Crawley by taking the life of her only boy. She and the Iranian Mullah's saw this _Fatwa_ as recompence for the evil the beautiful great lady had done onto the princess. For years they had dogged and hunted George since he was a boy. Having nearly killed him in his young childhood, with a mother who refused to believe that such a bounty existed, even as her boy lay poisoned and near death. But after his exile, escaping the sack of Grantham County to America, George left the name Crawley behind and thus made it incredibly hard for the Pamuk Princess and her Bounty Hunters to find him. But before his return to England, the handsome Princess and her illegitimate grandson had finally caught up with George in Newport at the ruins of old Levinson Manor. There the two young men, the son and heir of Lady Mary and the fair faced bastard of Kamal Pamuk, fought a bitter duel of swords over the lust and misunderstanding of their parents in their youth.

It is also so here marked in this tale that, in the two young swordsmen's duel atop a runaway train, this was also the final battle in the ancient war between the Eastern Roman Empire and Ottoman Caliphate. Fore George Crawley was of the direct and unbroken line of the beautiful and regal Lady Elfstone, the Last Princess of Byzantium. While Alemdar Pamuk was, indeed, all that remained of the true blood of the first Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, though the Ottomans may have sacked Constantinople and driven the last Roman Princess to the far lands of Northern England. In the end, it was her beloved descendent that drove the last of the Sultan's blood to defeat and ruin in honorable battle many centuries later.

Thus, the feud endured, rekindled with hatred. But also, the attacks from the bounty hunters had stopped when George Crawley returned to England. And many would remember - girded to the side of his pack of fine leather - an ornate scabbard, and sheathed inside, the ancestral sword of the House of Pamuk, taken as a trophy from the very hand of his defeated foe.

Yet, it is said that no one was sure what happened to Alemdar Pamuk that day in Rhode Island. Whether George had slain him in their duel or if he had spared his life. Some said that he was dead, ran through by Lord Grantham's army saber that George had recovered from Levinson Manor. Others believed that the valiant Captain Crawley had spared the beautiful young man's life as a point of honor. Thus, it was told that perhaps it was fear that Alemdar foreswore his House's vendetta against Lady Mary - fear of George Crawley. There were some that said that it was shame, to have been defeated by George and yet spared to live on with the knowledge that he could not carry out his purpose - to avenge a father he never met. Yet, there was always a hope that, having been shown mercy unlooked for by a superior swordsman, Alemdar Pamuk would do the honorable thing and uphold his sworn vow to never raise the sword against the House of Grantham ever again.

They were all questions whose answers only time would tell.

But for Marigold, she knew nothing of such things as she looked upon the Damascus Steel with interest and wonder. Eventually, hands behind her back, she walked off, admiring the room that she had missed so much. It was unfathomable just how many adventures George, Sybbie, and herself had in this room, in this house, always dreaming of being somewhere else. Now, the young man of her dreams for eight long years had returned with such interesting treasures that they had only dreamed of in their childhood. There was a globe sized pearl, Atlantean War Helm, and mysterious ancient maps framed on the walls. Yet, there was still something missing that truly made the house home...

And that was Marigold, herself.

She still bore the wound from that snowy night in Downtown Fort Worth. She could still see him there on the city sidewalk, leaning against the street clock by "Harrow's Jewelry Store", listening to the homeless string band play so sweetly. The storefront lights shadowed his bundled figure in the cold. And when he turned, seeing her in her velvet cloak and silk evening gown, shimmering in the cornucopia of multicolored lights, she wanted to die. Fore, in that moment, when he saw her in her elegant and regal glory, scored to the perfect music, he looked to be in heaven. But she knew that she had come to break his heart, as hers was already shattered.

It was a certainty that came from the close calls when her Aunt Edith and George had gone into Mexico to save their Uncle Tom. In the aftermath of many brushes with death by George's side on the adventure, Lady Edith found that it was time to tell Marigold the truth, the real truth of her paternity. Her poor mama, she thought that telling the girl the truth would make her happy. Instead, she had crushed her beyond repair. When Marigold closed her eyes, she could still hear the young man she dreamed of all of her life, desperately trying to get her to run away with him, get lost somewhere outside of San Antonio. No one would know. They could be happy in this little spot by the river that he had picked out for them. But it was one more dream of theirs that would never come true, not for them, not now that they were …

Even now she couldn't bring herself to say it.

Even for people of George's status in the Gentry, they drew the line at Second Cousins, and only if the Estate was somehow in trouble. But now they had no chance, no future. So here she was standing in a house that she thought would be theirs someday. But there would never be a someday for the two of them, no matter how much they didn't want it to be true. Their family didn't know, could never know, what it was that broke her heart so. And somehow it only hurt more to know that she could never tell a soul, never fully share her pain. She could never give voice to all of her crushed dreams.

She was not and could never be George, forever brooding in the quiet of this place, closing himself off from his family, the world. Marigold loved their family, loved everyone in it. There was nothing she couldn't tell her Aunt … _her_ _mama_ , or Sybbie, or Uncle Tom. But she could only wither away in silence and try to hide the pain inside herself as the decay killed her slowly in George's absence from her very future. Their granny told her that whoever it was that hurt her, whoever he might have been, that there would be other boys, other men, in her life that would make her forget. Over these few months, Marigold had tried to live the way other girls her age did. And she's had a great deal of fun.

But yet, in the quiet stillness of a late afternoon, in the dark of the night, she found herself still standing on the snowy downtown street in North Texas. Just for a moment, in the clatter of horse hoofs and the flashing lights of passing motors, she could still see George standing at the street corner. A lost young man under the clock outside the jewelry store, in threadbare and ragged clothes, and shadowed in lights. He watched, brokenly, as the girl he loved all his life left him for the final time. When they would see each other again it would not be, could never be, as what they had always been.

The slow falling snow turned to freezing rain that pelted a lone and worn figure that watched the beauty's taxi pull away back to the high class and luxurious "Hotel Texas" where the rest of their family was staying, without George. Through the droplets of the back window she watched a lost and bewildered adventurer standing in a ruined world and life, which, so suddenly, didn't make sense anymore. When the memory always concluded, she found herself sitting in her opulent dressing room at the end of the first act of a performance. Once more she would apologize to Maisie, her make-up artist, who had to reapply her costume's mascara and blush for the single tear that streaked down the ballerina's perfect face.

Even now she felt the old pain of that day standing in the very house she knew she shouldn't have come to. She still remembered the last words George had spoken to her. He had proclaimed that he would wait forever for Marigold, he'd wait till the universe folded on itself, till reality changed. He'd wait forever … and then a decade afterward just to make sure he 'didn't miss it'. She prayed that he wouldn't, but another part of her cherished the very idea of the deathlessness of their dream. That someday, some time, or in some other reality from this one, they'd find each other. They only had forever to search for that perfect tomorrow waiting for them somewhere in the night sky. In the meantime, she'd hide him somewhere special in her large heart, somewhere were only she knew. If she'd come to lose everything else in life, she'd know that she would always have George's love.

That she'd have their unbreakable dreams of a life together somewhere in the ether of where the universe ends, and Heaven begins.

Quietly, she wiped a single tear away from her milky cheek as she paced to an end table. A sad smirk touched her lips as she observed a greened brass bladed dagger that sat on a table display. It looked old, very ancient. It had hieroglyphic symbols that ran down the duel serpentine twisting metal that made up the blade that was gapped down the middle. Even thousands of years later the meticulously crafted weapon was gorgeous to look upon with an emerald above the handle. Yet, the ballerina's smirk didn't come from the dagger, but from a stack of letters piled next to it. She only shook her head at the Egyptian dagger, the same one used by "The Queen of the Upper Nile" to kill herself when the Pharaoh murdered her lover. It was a tale told by every Egyptology professor to his teenage daughters who they thought were being 'a bit excessive' about a boy they weren't allowed to see. But it seemed, much to George's annoyance, that Sybbie was not only having her mail delivered to his house, but he also might be a 'wee' bit more upset that she had been using a priceless artifact as her personal letter opener … again.

She picked up a picture frame that was sitting at the edge of the curving blade's single point. It was a professional photo from a crime scene photographer. In it had been a standing gilded sarcophagus of a young queen of the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. Her depiction was regal and ornate, arms crossed with scepter and religious rod. The carvings and painstaking artisanship to the entombed mummy spoke to this 'sister-wife's' great importance. However, one couldn't help but snort at the parody of such a thing as being a "big deal" in the modern world. For on either side of her were two people that couldn't look less serious.

Sybbie and George both had an arm around the Queen's shoulders, posing with playfully star struck faces, pointing dumb founded at the sarcophagus as if she were some Hollywood starlet that agreed to take a picture with two of her biggest fans. Somehow, the mocking comedy was only enhanced by the look of deep loathing of a small man with full hair and large glasses with busted soda pop lenses that were cracked from a punch by a teenage girl. Two 'Bobbies' were lifting him off the floor as he was being carried to a police "Wagon" filled with his beaten and bruised "associates" from the East End.

For a moment there, the head curator of the Egyptology Department at the Metro Museum thought he could replace the real mummy with a replica and sell her for top dollar to the collectors. It was a scheme that worked for years, till now. He thought the worst embarrassment the academic and trusted classical historian could face had been being carried into a police vehicle while under arrest. But now he had to go to Scotland Yard Lock Up with the knowledge that a teenage girl, who looked as if she had just walked off the pages of Vogue, had been the one to knock him out.

It was one thing to go to prison having taken "The Comet's" best shots. They wore those bruises and scars as a badge of honor in the places he was headed. But he'd be eaten alive if they all found out that it wasn't Crawley, but his partner - the Pin-Up Girl from "Burke's Landed Gentry" - who did him in. Now, he could only scowl, watching the pair of damn kids, who ruined him, taking stupid pictures with his once ticket to retirement in the British Bahamas.

Marigold only chuckled under her breath at the picture. There was never a better tonic to her poorer moods than the everlasting, ever suffering, keystone friendship of George and Sybbie. Always seeing them together, up to their antics, put a smile on the girl's face. There were never two people that belonged together as much as they should steer clear. They were so often mistaken for Lady Grantham's twins, born to her later in life, that they had just stopped correcting people these days. Both had shared black raven curls and the same cerulean eyes. Both had the same generically similar Lady Cora Crawley inspired face, Sybbie favoring their Granny, and George much more his Aunt Sybil. If it wasn't for George's height, hammering physic, and American Southwestern skin tone, they might have been identical on some winter days. But the twins' comparison didn't just stop at looks. No, not when a normal conversation had between the two could easily turn into a laughing fit as it could a knockdown, drag out, fight over some small thing.

The two argued like sisters, fought like brothers, and snuggled together in sleep like a litter of newborn puppies. Marigold couldn't remember the last time she had ever fought with Sybbie. She was her best friend, her big sister, they loved each other completely. But then, there was being 'sisters', and then there was being 'twins' like George and Sybbie. When they fought, they actually fought. They punched, slapped, smacked, and wrestled with one another. There were times when the family had come into the Library for tea to find Sybbie on George's back, forearm locked around his neck as he was smashing her against a column. Other times, in the gardens, they watched an annoyed Sybbie motioning for George to get something over with. Then, with a terrific thud, he would wind up and punch the girl in the face. They all watched in horror as Sybbie lay in the grass for a long moment. But, then, when George gave her a hand back to her feet, the girl would pinch her nose a moment, before giving him a thumb up to signal they were 'square'. Then, they'd all watch, flabbergasted, as they'd toss arms around each other and continue on as if nothing happened. When later pressed at dinner about getting punched in the face, the girl only shrugged, claiming that they had made a bet … and she lost. No one was sure what was more disturbing, the payment style of their bet, or the fact that Sybbie was looking at all of them as if they were the weird ones.

Yet, still, sometimes arriving home from the office, Tom Branson and Lady Mary could find George and Sybbie napping on a couch in the Downton Great Hall after a victorious caper. George would be stretched out on a cushioned piece of furniture. His outback fedora's brim slouched over his eyes, one boot dangling over the arm rest, the other planted on the rug. His hand absently stroking Sybbie's backside as she lay deeply snuggled on top of him, her nose nuzzled into the beaten leather of his old jacket collar - always loving the smell of it. How they ended up there, no one, not even they, could remember. But not a word was spoken to disturb them when Thomas draped a blanket, paternally, over their sleeping figures. Tom only wished Mary would just let go of her self-loathing, guilt, and her ridiculously complicated schemes of stalking George, when he'd see her deeply glassy red tinted dark eyes as she stood watching her children sleep. But, thus, was the contradiction and welded together inseparability of the two siblings.

In truth, one could always tell when George and Sybbie were approaching, because, they were always heralded by argument, laughter, or both.

Marigold was lost in thought, running her thumb over George's face in the frame. The girl had many boyfriends these last few years. In that time, she had fun. In fact, some of her most cherished memories had been of this summer, even in her broken heart that was yet to mend. But she knew that the same could not be said of George. He had not moved on, unable to let go, and never would. He had only loved one girl in his life and would grow to forsake all other romantic attachments, seeing no point in them. There were plenty of girls out there in the world that the boy would encounter in his many adventures. Many would be of surpassing beauty and strikingly exotic. But in the end, they'd all have the same problem …

And that was that they simply weren't Marigold.

But ever in the back of her mind she felt afraid that it was this very reason that he would not stay. Without her in his life or in his future, in the constant battles with Donk over an estate he despised almost as much as he hated his captive: the 'blessed' Lady Mary. Eventually, George would feel that there was nothing keeping him here. For now, he put up with their family, because, Aunt Isobel was so very sick, and he wanted to be near his 'Grams'. But when the end eventually came, she was so terribly afraid that he would leave again.

She knew it was selfish of her to be carrying on as she did with her boyfriend of the month, all the while the man she actually loved brooded ever in the distance of what had been stolen from them in the expulsion of their family's closest guarded secret. But Marigold couldn't help it. She was trying so very hard to move on, to accept that the life she dreamed of was not viable. And yet, she couldn't bear for him to be so far away. The ballerina was unsure she could survive watching him leave her again. That was why she was so glad of all the headlines and funny pictures of George and Sybbie's antics and Cases. Her dear and beloved Sybbie gave George something to hold onto, so that Marigold had something to hold onto even as she careened listlessly in her super-stardom as a world class Prima Ballerina.

But as the lovely young girl cherished the picture, a tall shadow slowly cast darkly over her unsuspecting figure as it approached her from the doorway.

* * *

Sybbie had lost her mummy the night she was born, but in her ignorance, she felt no harm in the absence. Since she could remember, she had been fully embraced by her family and the servants. So deep was the love for Lady Sybil and the kindness and joy she shared with everyone that her only child was showered with the great reward of her mummy's deeds in life. They say that, in truth, Lady Mary had adopted Sybbie while she was still inside Lady Sybil. There seemed to be no one in the house more invested in the birth of that baby girl than Lady Mary, starved for a child of her own with her beloved Matthew. And in the night that her little sister died, both Mary and the baby had imprinted on each other so very quickly and deeply that it was said that Sybbie hadn't a chance to know the missing piece of her life.

George was a different story. He bore a great pedigree of the deepest of loves which had conceived him, and thus, created a great burden of expectation upon him in its death. From birth, the boy was supposed to be the answer to everyone's prayers, the son of the late Matthew Crawley, Downton and the House of Grantham's great savior and champion. His face was the spitting image of their sainted Lady Sybil, the very soul of a noble family. Without those two missing pieces that he had the misfortune of resembling in either spirit or in looks, the expectations of others had crushed the boy without even being given a chance.

The Crawley family had placed too much faith in a boy to have all the answers, to have the kind of fly by night luck that had saved them so many times with Matthew as navigator. But instead, they found only a small boy who loved his teddy and Marigold. A boy who was slower than most taking to his letters and writing, no matter how much Isobel and Moseley worked with him. He was a disappointment from the beginning, a punch line at dinner for Mary, Rosamund, and Violet. Of course, they loved him – or at least Mary did – but still they found it all, especially George's slowness, awfully funny. Edith was the only one who did not find it very amusing and warned the family that it would not be wise to speak of the boy as such. The Marchioness of Hexham took the slings and arrows of ridicule for being a 'stick in the mud', but the woman was staunch that she would never allow them to treat a child she loved so greatly like they had her.

But it wasn't long till George had heard from Denker and Spratt of the joke that he had become to his mama and other female family members. Ever one for confrontation, the boy cornered Mary and Henry about it in their bedroom as the pallid beauty changed for dinner. Mary's response was classic to herself, claiming that it wasn't of a lack of love that she said such things, but it did him no favors to pretend that he was under achieving. And that in the future, if he wished not to be made fun of, he might try harder.

To this, George responded by insulting Mary's fashion, snidely recalling that she seemed masculine and implying that she rather had him confused if he truly was missing a father or a mother. The scoffed cough of Henry that ill hid his chortle at his wife's expense, caused Mary to see red. No one, not ever, had shown such naked contempt or aggression toward Mary as George had in that moment of savage insult to all she prided herself upon. At a loss for words, in temper, and rather adolescently, Mary gave the boy an unexpected shove. But she was more surprised when the boy, in immediate response, shoved his mama right back with an escalating force. Thus, before Henry had time to even think, he found George and Mary's suddenly wrestling and rolling on the bed.

The under slip that Mary wore had been torn from her by George's grip in their struggle. Meanwhile Mary held George by his jacket collar, balling and twisting it angrily. Not easily had Henry and Anna – who was returning with Mary's evening gown – ungrappled the two. Red faced and dark in temper did Mary stand in Henry's arms while George, wild and unkempt, twisted while off his feet by Anna's hold upon him. Suddenly, realizing what they had done, both mother and son were horrified. And George quickly fled the room in shame as Mary stood flushed and in her silken underwear, realizing that she had physically fought her own child.

Henry had the decency, when Anna went after George, to warn his shocked wife that she had just made the gravest mistake she could've, and that she'd learn to regret it but once … and that was continuously. But Mary, seeing the scratch on her collar bone where George had accidently ripped her slip off, only snarled at Henry. She reportedly informed her husband that he had no right to an opinion. George was her son, not his, and that she would deal with him in any manner she saw fit. But when Henry left the room and Anna returned, she found Mary sobbing uncontrollably, afear of the monstrous act she did.

But it dawned on Mrs. Talbot that she had crossed a line only when, one day, George was gone.

Yet, it took all day for Mary to do anything, refusing to be worried about it, even when he never came home. She refused to give in to childishness, even when being reminded by a terribly worried Anna that George was, in fact, a child in the first place. Mary was still stubborn even onto the next day, claiming that he was probably hiding at Crawley House with Isobel and Dickie or was stowed away in her Granny's kitchen by Denker and Spratt. She'd wait him out, rather than give him the attention she thought he was seeking.

But she was forced to rethink her strategy when Sybbie started crying, afraid for her best friend. Then, Caroline was becoming impossible to tame, knowing that some tasks were easily preformed with her big brother being there to comfort her. But it was clear that the breaking of that routine had upset the baby mightily and much more than Mary had thought at first. Finally, at the angry behest of Lord and Lady Grantham, as well as Henry, they made it clear that George had run away, and not to anywhere close by.

But once more, the princess of the county would not budge. She claimed to be sure that Edith - who had such an odd attachment to George as it was - had probably picked him up to 'protect' him from "Wicked Queen Mary" and took him to Brancaster to be with Marigold. But as the days went by - with Edith swearing she didn't have George - Mary began to become angrier and angrier at the great trouble that they found themselves in when Edith and Bertie rushed over to help. She couldn't understand why George had to make everything so difficult. She told Tom and Henry that she never had such problems with Sybbie or the baby. That somehow only George could set her teeth on edge, and her his. She also felt very rancorous when everyone was becoming increasingly cross with her early inaction the more desperate, they had become when every hiding place conceivable was found empty. But most of all, Lady Mary was angry with herself for what she had done in her room, physically squabbling with her boy in her knickers like they were some brigands quarreling in the reek, rolling around in the mud under thatch.

It wasn't till days later that they found him at Grantham House in London, of all places.

His care was under a tall and stately man with a fierce beard and shadowy veiled eyes. He wore a tall turtleneck and dark blue peacoat. On his head was a turban that was pinned by a great jewel that proved divinity in the rule of his domain. The princely figure gave no name, no station, only introduced himself as a Captain of a vessel. He stated that he intercepted the young boy trying to barter passage for Algeria - with a genuine Gutenberg Bible - so he might join the Foreign Legion.

Though interested in the Grantham's prized artifact, both Captain and George seemed to have a 'disagreement' of the boy's marshal prowess needed to fight Wahhabi Bedouins in North Africa. Though, the mysterious man complimented that it was not George's lack of spirit or heart, that he could not pass the captain's test of strength. Before leaving - refusing Lord Grantham's offer for compensation - the mysterious Science Pirate relayed to Lady Merton that he'd be watching young master George with the greatest of interest.

In the aftermath, the Crawley family got but a taste of a black temper within the boy. George ate humbly the chastisement from his Donk and Granny of the stupidity of his actions, of how dangerous it was to be stowing away on trains and wandering the London Docklands alone. Though Robert seemed more alarmed that George decided to take the Gutenberg, instead of some of the silver like his mama at his age. But it was when Lady Mary attempted to lecture that the boy coldly rebuffed his mama.

It only escalated from there. They all watched in amazement as the boy went toe to toe with Lady Mary Talbot the more she tried to assert authority over him. Suddenly, they were at raised voices, and the things that were being said were wounding. Mary had a lot to comment on in terms of the ungrateful and rancorous little rebel. And the boy had just as much, and maybe more, to say about everyone who laughed at him, most especially his vapid and cold mama. Finally, a gob smacked Lady Grantham, who had never seen mother and child fight so, intervened, having to break the two up with Tom's help as thing were starting to get physical once more.

George was sent with Isobel to his Aunt Sybil's old room to think about what he had said about his Great-Grandmother and Aunt Rosamund. Meanwhile, Lady Grantham came down hard on Mary for her behavior, not only in the moment, but of recently. The way she was attempting to parent George was not the way she was raised, nor was it the way that Cora would allow any nanny or governess to treat Mary and Edith. And if her eldest daughter thought that her mama would allow her to revive the vapid and archaic style of parenting pioneered by Lady Violet Crawley, she would be sadly mistaken. To this, Mary, incredibly hurt by the things that her son had said to her, claimed that if her mama was so interested in sticking her nose in, then she can raise him.

In that moment Lady Mary Talbot realized that George was never gonna be Robert Crawley, and more importantly … she realized that her son would never allow her to be the 'frightening old lady, keeping everyone up to the mark' that Lady Violet wished her granddaughter to take over. Thus, it would ever be that as long as Mary Talbot pursued such a legacy, she would only find herself in a battle to the death with a boy who would never submit to the scolds or arrogant schemes of Matriarchy. In view of this daunting task of raising the wild young rebel she birthed and the monumental labor of reinventing her current attitudes to be a better parent to her child, Mary, instead, backed away from her son entirely for the first time.

Yet, from then on, the jokes about George's slowness stopped. But then, so did all talk of him and, indeed, care. The boy's rebellious nature, propensity for confrontation, and push back, had caught the family by surprise. George had proven, quite young, that he was not his Aunt Edith when it came to dealing with his family's barbs and criticism.

George Crawley demanded respect, or he'd take it by force.

In the new realized fierceness of elemental nature, the boy went from a loveable small child, like Sybbie and Marigold, to a problem that an Edwardian lot didn't want or know how to handle. Suddenly, overnight, George was left completely to Anna and Thomas. As long as he showed up for the servant's Breakfast, Luncheon, and late-afternoon supper in the Kitchen, no one seemed to care what he did or where he went. Most downstairs disagreed with this move by the family. They knew it sent the wrong message to such a stubborn boy. The idea of if he stepped out of line, just a bit, they'd cut him off. It showed how little they knew of raising children.

For most, the cold shoulder might have caused a child to act out for attention. But for George Crawley, it only made him more determined to prove them all wrong. He had begun splitting his time between Thomas and the rest of the staff downstairs and the nursery with the babies. He doubled down hard on practicing his reading and writing. The jokes and laughter at his expense haunted and tormented him, and his only comfort was the cuing babies of his sister Caroline and tiny Mr. Johnny Bates that watched the boy from their playpen. For weeks he tormented and agonized over miss labeling flashcards. He became obsessed in finding a chance to show everyone, especially his mama, that he wasn't a failure, a disappointment. That he could live up to the standards set by those before him, that he could be all the things that were expected from the only child of the Lady and the Lawyer.

But, in all that time he thought he was alone, he had not known that Mary was watching him like a hawk. A great guilt ate away at her, as she watched him try so very hard to overcome his learning stigma on his own. Henry and Tom couldn't understand why Mary couldn't just make up with him. They accused the woman, much like her child, of being impossibly stubborn. But the truth was that in her outburst of uncharacteristic emotions of frustration and anger, she saw how much she hurt her only son. And it made her phobic of engaging with him again.

Instead, she gained what the family saw as a very bad habit of stalking her son – and of such obsession she would never fully break from for the rest of her life. It began as going through incredibly circuitous channels and tactics to find out about George's day with the utmost and detailed account of his goings on, rather than just going up and asking how he was. But Mary had hurt people before, even people she loved, but there was something different about hurting your child. All she kept thinking was that if her mama had said the things that she had said to George in her anger, it would've broken Mary at his age. But Tom told her that she can't ask of Anna, Thomas, and Lady Grantham to raise the boy, because, Mary was afraid of messing up again.

Fore, by the end, Tom found that Mary's obsession with her boy had devolved to her physically following George around the gardens and village, hiding behind trees, listening against the door of the nursery to hear him playing with the girls and the babies. Asking Anna to tell her all about what he talked about at the servant's breakfast and Luncheons, or Thomas what he said at dinner to Daisy and Mrs. Patmore. And that was if she wasn't lingering in the shadows of the servant's stairs to eavesdrop on his mealtime conversations with the staff. It seemed that at the height of their tension, in combating wills, Mary had never been more drawn to him … as it had been with Matthew in early days.

However, she finally faced the realities of her fears when a miscommunication led her to believe that George had gone missing again. This time she was all too aware of the Bounty that was placed on her son's head from the Aunt of the King of Iran, whose only child, a son, had died in the sinful embrace of Lady Mary. For years they had all heard that the Persian wife of the old Sultan's cousin had offered every cut throat and bounty hunter from Tehran to Constantinople, Bagdad to Jerusalem, and Calcutta to Hong Kong, the heir of the House of Grantham's weight in gold for whoever killed him. The Saracen Princess Pamuk would have an 'Eye for an Eye' with the woman who killed her son, accident or not.

It was easy to dismiss when he was a baby, but now that he was getting bigger by the day, she was afraid that some cutthroat from the Orient would try to 'cash in' early, ahead of the competition. All those fears caused her to be rather sensitive when Mrs. Hughes offhandedly replied that she didn't seem to know where Master George had gotten too. She had nearly scared poor Daisy into retirement when she stormed downstairs demanding to know where George had gone. She was somewhat relieved to hear from Thomas that he had gone down to the basement with Anna.

There she found that both her lady's maid and son were going through chests of old clothes. And in that moment, Mary's breath was taken away. Somehow, George was playing with Sybil and Matthew's old uniforms. When his mother found him, he had put on his aunt's old headscarf and wore it under his father's mud fossilized and battle-damaged officer's cap. Though Matthew's uniform jacket and weapons belt were way too big for him, the boy still amused himself by primping. He was playing around in the mash up of the floppy sleeves of the singed olive officer's jacket and leather utility belt strapped across his chest in front of a half-covered wardrobe mirror. George had no idea that the uniform had belonged to his father, but for his mother, she could never forget it.

Mary didn't know or remember what happened next. The only thing she knew was that she had swallowed that boy whole in her arms. She felt his legs wrapped around her waist in somewhat alarmed reaction as he suddenly found himself off his feet and snuggled fiercely to his mama's pale bosom. He was confused and bewildered in this sudden typhoon of love as she buried her face into the officer's cap that was slouched heavily over the young boy's eyes.

From that moment on, all things said and done, all of the fears that kept her away, were forgiven and forgotten. She swore that she'd never forget what he was and what he meant to her, to all of them. And for a long while afterward, it was good again, nearing great. She found that she had come to rather enjoy the immense comfort of their much more candid and jovially adversarial relationship that they reformed. Fore, it resembled much of how it had been with Matthew in the blissful days of engagement and marriage. And both Mary and George found that they rather liked to debate and sharpen their wit against one another, feeling a burst of deep endearment in a sharing of private grins after a bout of contested word play. But from such things came also the habit of secret midnight visits to George and Sybbie's room. There, Lady Mary, propped against their headboard, quietly petted and admired the perfect young children in her arms as they slept snuggled against her silken warmth. And for awhile Lady Mary was at peace in the immensity of love she bore for all three of her children in those cherished days.

Yet, the doom of the House of Grantham would not be gainsaid by such joys, and it was on one Christmas morning, that such a sudden and emotional bond they formed so strongly would destroy them.

It was a mistake in medicine labels that had put his baby sister in critical condition. A true killing frost of an ice storm had frozen dead the motors. There was chaos in the nursery, Thomas trying desperately to keep a baby alive. A young boy, who had caught the flaw and alerted the downstairs staff, watched his stepfather freeze, shut down completely. His mother begging him to do something in tears, but the man of action was completely helpless in flashes of a fire that killed his best friend on a racetrack.

Then, in desperation, Lady Mary Talbot turned to the child that she had found a deep well of such primal love for. In her panic and helplessness, she saw everything that everyone had wanted him to be in that moment. And some have said that it was not for a lack of love, but the perilousness of loving too greedily and too fiercely that Lady Mary brought ruin upon the House of Grantham that day. Fore, she fell to her knees, taking her son's hands, and told him that it had to be him, that George had to go to the hospital and get what was needed to save 'their' baby's life. And forever to the credit of a small boy, he didn't flinch at the deathly cold that besieged his home. Fore, putting on his Granny's scarf, his mama's gloves, slipping on his coat and hat, George Crawley rushed into that fateful icy morning without a hint of fear for himself.

Later, he was told by so many people that it was impossible, that he couldn't have done it. That no one could've. That poor baby was going to die that day, and by the time an eagle-eyed little boy caught the problem - when no adult had - there was nothing that anyone could've done about it. That, in truth, it was nothing but cruelty for his greatly beloved mama to send him out there, knowing it was a lost cause.

But in his soul, George Crawley still believed that he could've done it that morning. He was so sure that he was who he was, was born, for beating odds such as the ones presented that Christmas morning. But that very widely held belief was why no one could forgive him when he returned five minutes too late. Slowly, the boy had slid off his wind and frost crusted hat, freeing his moppy and snow dusted waving curls, as he watched an emotional Thomas carrying the baby out of the nursery, bundled in her favorite blanket.

Her big brother had never even got to say goodbye.

His family had been weeping and suffering greatly when he walked up to them in the hall. They all looked over a small boy who was crusted in frost, cheeks beet red, and nose bleeding. In the snow caked hand, he held out to them a white bag filled with medicine. They saw him standing there, broken hearted, and they only shook their heads in bitter looks of anger and disappointment. It wasn't done in vitriol, it wasn't grossly subtle, and it wasn't done with hatred. But he saw it in their eyes, in all of their eyes.

The boy wasn't a disappointment, not at all. He was simply a bust, a misnomer, fool's gold. He had the look, the paternity, and the legacy of love that bore him into the universe. But he just wasn't the answer to anyone's prayers. He only proved that morning that he wasn't the answer for anything at all. But most of all, he saw the venom in Lady Mary's eyes when everyone else had moved on. She glared a deeply felt and deadly type of poison at the boy just standing there with the medicine in hand, too late.

Very soon afterward Lady Mary would gregariously regret what she had done to her boy and would know it was so terribly wrong in all levels of cruelty to a child. In recompense of her, self-realized, hateful crimes, the woman chose to cut the boy out of her heart, for the unbearable pain of what she had done and what he couldn't that fateful morning. From such an action, Lady Mary Crawley coldly discarded her most valued and beloved meaning in life - now tarnished and broken - without even a second thought. It was, because, of this decision that the venomous look Mary had given to George that morning was the last true interaction they had for ten long years. And from it, the boy would come to never again see the way she had used to look at him before that Christmas morning. Thus, lost and forgotten were the joyous memories that, once, long ago, a mother and son had loved each other most terribly. Now, those memories were all replaced with nothing but a deep seeded blame and disappointment that would ever color the way that the entire House of Grantham would look at George.

Yet, much too soon afterward, the boy would fall deathly ill from his failed charge into the bitter winter's siege lines. And, believing him to be near death, Lord Grantham would make perhaps the greatest error that would haunt him forever. Driven by a madness of a deep grief indescribable, in what they believed were George's final hours, Robert Crawley sent their heir, their only boy, to Matthew Crawley's room at Lady Merton's house in the village. But not just George, but all of his toys, books, and clothing, all of it was put in crates and delivered to Crawley House, the entire evidence of the boy's existence hidden from their site. And there, for days, he lingered afloat in between the very ether of existence itself. But whether by a greater will power than thought possible or by doom's hand, he would not submit to the prostrating power of the destroyer. Yet, it was in the dark of a cold midnight, that his eyes opened, and his fever was broken. There, surrounded by all of his earthly possessions in cold drab crates, he found himself completely alone in a dark house.

Fore by a great folly had Lord and Lady Merton gone to secure burial rights in Cornwall, where the divided branch of the line of Grantham that Reginald and Matthew Crawley descended had hailed. And though Lady Merton wished her grandson to be lain betwixt Matthew and Sybil, the boy was denied burial in the Grantham graveyard by Mr. Travis of whose orders he did not reveal. Thus, though it be the ancestral burial plot of the Trenwith and Nampara Poldarks - before they melded into one with the lesser Crawley line – Isobel felt some comfort that George would be in company of Reginald and Matthew's forefathers as well as her own – being an Enys of Killewarren. Before leaving, in tears, Lady Merton asked the gravestones of their ancestors by the old Trenwith church to look after her grandchild.

Yet, after strange dreams upon the train, walking back to Crawley House assured for the worse. She nearly had a heart attack when she found George, sitting upon the front steps of Crawley House, wrapped in a blanket. In his company was the Sikh Science Pirate who spoke solemnly with the youth. When Isobel ran to the boy in tears, she had asked the old captain if this miracle was his doing. But the mad man only laughed, saying that such a deed was not in his power … but of whose power of great will and mastery over death's assurance it was, he could not ignore. Then, he held a handout to George. Thus, with Lord and Lady Merton as witness, young George Crawley stood and determinedly took the hand of Captain Nemo …

Thus, the bargain was struck and the wheels of a great doom of the House of Grantham began to turn again.

When news of young George's recovery came to Downton Abbey, they all were dismayed and in wonder. But they were all amazed further to find the boy grabbing the last of his things in a pack, pale, sallow eyed, but changed. He was grimmer now, hardened, and heart sickened beyond the countenance of a child. He proclaimed in that final hour that he would _**never**_ return to Downton Abbey as a resident, nor did he consider himself a member of the House of Grantham. Then, in ancient custom, he threw a badge of the Silver Dragon on navy field, the coat of arms of their House, into the fire. Slinging his pack on his back, he left to the sea and the beginnings of what would be a legendary Jesuit education.

Lord Grantham, upon hearing that his Grandson had lived, fell to shame. He was rancorous to Lady Violet, for it had been her insistence of sending the boy away to placate to Mary and Sybbie's mental health for their future, which she advised was more important in the immediacy than the dying boy, whose fate no one could change. But after rancorously scolding his mama, the man felt only pained by the cruelty in him for such weakness in sending his boy away to die alone. Nor was he forgiven by Cora and Edith who had both stormed out of Downton in protest, though an enraged Lord Merton did not allow them entrance to Crawley House to sit by George's 'death bed', fore they did not allow George the same rights for Caroline. But upon George's bold reentrance to Downton, disowning his grandfather in bitter grudge, and taking all things of Matthew's former ownership from their possession as _weregild_ , Robert was enraged and deeply begrieved at the boy.

And when George returned from the sea some months later, he found himself barred from Downton Abbey, disowned, and unacknowledged as a Grantham of high standing. To his Grandfather and Lady Mother, and all of his own family in public, George Crawley was the last of an ancient mining family and a lesser son of greater sires. He was heir - not of the Grantham Estate – but to the meager Cornish inheritance of Reginald and Matthew Crawley: the long derelict mine of Wheal Grace, the ruins of the Trenwith Estate, and an overgrown Nampara house, where every lesser Crawley till George had been born. When questioned at dinner party, royal ball, or at posh restaurant in London, all but Edith, for many years, spoke of the Beautiful Ms. Sybil Branson whenever the heir of Downton Abbey was mentioned publicly.

And when, eventually, the boy's adventures brought him into conflict and then a personal vendetta against the Prince of Wales and the Royal family, he was spirited away as an outlaw to the Levenson fences in America, and there he stayed, for eight long years. And in that long exile, eventually, George faded away from his family's lives over the years as the girls took center stage of the family's concentration and pride in their growing popularity in society. In that time the boy would come to see many hardships and sorrows of Depression. Yet, his memory and existence would soon be mostly forgotten weeks at a time by a family busied with what they knew of their own world that was miles apart from the one he came to know … all alone. In truth, some called George Crawley "The Comet", because, he was the fastest racer anyone had ever seen. But there were a few that knew that it had another meaning, entirely …

Fore, he was the very symbol of a great love's wish upon a shooting star that had, simply, never come true.

But Sybbie knew all of them to be mistaken. She knew and loved George all of his life. When everyone else had, it was Sybbie, along with Marigold and their Aunt Edith, who had never forgotten him. There was a part of the girl that knew that she'd never find a man she loved more than her best friend. Sure, she'd get married, probably more than once. But somehow, she always saw herself coming back here, to Crawley House, to this life of theirs together. And in this life, she knew that the things that haunted the young man were false. There were countless lives on four continents, countless kingdoms and countries, which were made the better, had been saved, by the heroism and valiant actions of George Crawley over the years.

Never had there been a sterling reputation of one's faithfulness to make a thing of long odds and come through it with the admiration of many. There were stories dedicated to such things in "The Sketch". For God's sake! There was an entire study filled with trophies, relics, and other such proofs of many a deed worthy of accounting! Just one of the many things he had done and accomplished in his life, most people would hang the rest of their lives upon! Yet, George could never see past the failures of his childhood, of the many dark things that he had never told a soul of on his adventures. Forever, no matter what he did, the valiant young captain would ever be haunted by his inability to save his baby sister one fateful Christmas Morning.

There wasn't a man on this earth that comprehended better the knowledge that he was no Matthew Crawley. A man who knew he was no Lady Sybil - despite being her spitting image. That he had done nothing of worth in his own eyes that earned him the right to claim the paternity that created him. No one would ever be able to tell him that there was no way that he couldn't have saved baby Caroline Talbot. Nor that he had not gotten friends killed due to his damn fool actions in New Orleans, or that he had made mistakes in New York that had lasting consequences on his very soul.

George Crawley, at sixteen years old, knew all of these things better than those who quietly accuse him of not.

In the Study of Crawley House, Sybbie pondered long and darkly on the things she had come to understand. In her bones were the many tragedies that had formed her and her best friends – siblings, really. All of the blood grandchildren of Lord and Lady Grantham were missing a parent. Yet, Sybbie had never really thought of it, nobody had. Lady Mary had always been Sybbie's mama, had always been there for her, no matter what. Uncle Bertie might have been comatose these last four years, after what happened to him in New York, but he was the most loving father to Marigold while he was still in the conscious world.

But George had never had a quick or proper replacement fit so neatly as she and Marigold had. Henry had always seemed more of an Uncle to all of them, even George, and after his marriage to their mama, they grew more distant than closer. Till hatred ruled ever after the death of Caroline. And it was well known of George's promise to kill Henry Talbot if ever he set foot upon Grantham land or home again. It was a promise in full display on their last meeting some months since. And if it hadn't been for Thomas and Ellis, George might have accomplished all that he promised long ago when he stumbled upon Henry in the Downton Library.

It had been by some unlucky chance, that her daddy and their mama had invited Henry to tea when running into him at some car show. It had been by the madness of nostalgia and old sparks that the three had secretly rekindled a friendship, and for their mama and Henry, maybe more. But the minute that he arrived, their Granny asked, and then demanded that the man leave. Fore, Lady Cora never blamed George for his just failed rescue of Caroline. But of Henry Talbot, who froze when he was needed most, who passed his responsibility as a father and man grown onto a small boy, there was not enough blame in the world as far as Ladies Grantham and Hexham were concerned. And as Cora became disturbed in her seething conflict of this rather good man who had broken her house … that was when George arrived to speak with Thomas.

The now young man did not miss a beat in ten years. He, immediately, drew his double-sided Apache knife and lunged at Henry, catching him wide when Richard Ellis interrupted a knife fighter's expert stroke. It took Tom Branson, most of the male staff, and Anna Bates to wrestle him into restraint, his blade catching Henry on the side of the neck, inches from death. The raged cries of George, claiming that he was going to "Gut the _fucking_ coward!", echoed hollowly over the rush of a car engine as Henry obediently and humbly fled at the insistence of a terrified Mary. Ever afterward, Lady Grantham banned Henry Talbot from Grantham County, and the friendship between the three decayed once more, reminded why they broke up in the first place.

Yet, this spoke to the truth that the girls had no idea what it was like to be George in these last ten years, to have no mama or daddy, to feel and be so completely alone for so long.

It was something that she couldn't bring herself to think of so casually. Right on Sybil Afton Branson's heels was a dark and sinful existence in which she did many a terrible thing in pursuit of love and adoration. And in those dark moments, when the satisfaction had slid out to sea after the wave of her much-cherished release in carnal pleasure, she had felt so empty. In those sinful nights and weekends after being taken by so many lovers, her one great fear, even lying nakedly between two or three people - wrapped in opulent sheets of silk and naked limbs - was being alone.

She was haunted by the prospect that someday her family would cast her out, and she'd have no one. To be alone in the world was a prospect that she couldn't fathom. And it was that great fear that had led her to come to the cusp of taking her own life at the end of those sinful nights. In her darkest moments she pondered the idea of suicide many times, rather than her family finding out all that she had done in many bedrooms of their friends and neighbors. So, it was in these memories of such rash desperation and fear that she could contemplate how darkened and burdened George's mind was of late with ancient wounds of heartbreak and tragedy.

It was the only thing she could think of as to why he'd attempt a feat such as that to which he was planning with the **Grail of Prague**.

Suddenly, all of the girl's hair stood on end when she heard such a loud and ear-piercing scream echo nearby.

For a long pause, Sybbie was frozen in place at the frightening noise echoing from the dark of the hallway. In her static placement by the rounded study, something else, maybe just as frightening, had caught her eye. She spotted a glimmer of moonlight which shined through the half-stained-glass windowpanes facing the rose garden and onto the rack of ornate swords. No matter how many times she blinked, no matter how hard, her mind could not shake the sight.

The samurai blade, the one linked to the mysterious swordsman that George did not talk about, was now alight. Just like before, in Downton's great hall, she saw the long razor-sharp blade give off an azure glow that grew brighter and stronger as the moments passed. By the time of the noise of commotion coming from the sitting room, the enchanted holy sword was practically blazing like blue fire from its pegs on the rack. She was suddenly overcome with warning memories spoken by George, the only thing he ever said about the sword.

" _It'll glow blue when evil is nearby."_

" _Handy trick when it comes to teatime company."_

" _Not that kind of evil, Syb …"_

" _What kind?"_

" _The old kind, the ancient kind … the kind that you can feel in your bones when its near."_

" _I've never seen it, unless you count Lunch at Brampton."_

" _There are older and fouler things in this world, Syb, than society lunches."_

" _Heh, I'd love to see that."_

" _I hope you never do …"_

The memory of George's serious look and his loving peck as he passed lingered in her mind. He was the picture of a young man changed and haunted by the things he spoke of in warning to a young beauty he loved more than anything. Something turning over with a crash, snapped the girl out of the trance like state she was in, staring slack jawed at the glowing blue sword in moonlight. She did a double take, first toward the door, then back to the curved blade that was near humming in angry tension. But it was when she heard a distressed noise from a soft and innocent voice, that it set Sybbie's blood aflame.

She had no other recourse, it was not even a choice, she immediately went out the door to protect her little sister. But not before getting one last disbelieving look at the holy Japanese sword entrusted to George by an ancient warrior cursed by a Sun Goddess. The last Ronin, who traveled the world for centuries to find a fellow warrior, valiant and pure of heart, worthy to set him free so he might receive the gift given to all men that a spiteful queen had stolen from him long ago.

Immediately, Sybbie rushed down and across the hall toward the sitting room where there was much commotion. Inside she saw the group of young men scattering. They were rushing around the room, making nervous and disagreeable noises. Meanwhile, and more pressing to the young beauty's cares, was Marigold. Never before, but once, when they were so small, had Sybbie seen the ballerina so terrified. The young and lovely girl was tucked into the corner of the sitting room, her knees drawn up to her breasts. Marigold was hiding her face in sheer terror of memories and helplessness. The sight nearly destroyed Sybbie when exposed to the child like state of her cousin, best friend, and sister. She immediately rushed to her, trying to take her in her arms. But the girl only squirmed and began crying, too afraid to even look to see who was touching her. She kept begging to be left alone, and that she didn't want to go with him. The girl couldn't understand what she was saying or what she meant at all …

"BOO!"

When Sybbie snapped alertly, she made a startled gasp, her back smacking hard against the wall next to Marigold. From out of the shadows of the lamp lit room was a sinister figure. She recognized the button-down shirt and dark tie tucked under the sleeveless, pull over, grey sweater vest. She knew of the cut off trousers that went over the knee-high wool socks. In any other circumstance she wouldn't be frightened. But it was when she came face to face with the horned, spiked, and scaly Nubian mask that she was taken completely out of her element or depth. Even now, there was nothing more frightening to be snuck upon by. Not only was it the look, but the very feeling, the very essence which gave it its presence, feeding off on one's most private fears. Even in its very muted and toothless state within the walls of Crawley House, it remained still, the evilest thing that one could encounter in life.

It was in such turmoil and bitter fighting among the family, of the likes that the girl had never seen before, was what she associated with the mask. Her one experience was predicated on those horrible memories, and the helpless months of waiting for news of one so far away, locked in battle in New Orleans with it. And it was, to come face to face with such a thing, in person, that it fed off the old pain and sorrows in her heart. They're swirling cyclone feeding the phantasmal haunting of its endless symbolism for the many ills of the Crawley family over the years.

Chiefest among them was the fear of it taking George from a lonely young girl that needed her best friend. It could've stolen from Sybbie the only person who could've saved her from self-destruction and the many secret predators in her parent's lives which had captured such a lovely broken-hearted young thing. Perverted and slithering snakes that lured her away from the protective arms of her family and set her upon a path of the deepest darkness of vice and carnal sin.

However, with just a sinister lilt to a familiar chuckle, the girl's boyfriend lifted the mask up to the top of his head. There was a great jest to his teasing of the girl when he shown his chiseled good-looking face to the lamplight. But no one else was laughing among his companions. Even with the light-heartedness of adolescent pranks, the most talented trickster knew, intuitively, that an item such as the Mask of the Necromancer, a demon from the ancient world, was not something that one handles ... ever.

These were Sybbie's exact sentiments voiced with paint curling rancor at her young suitor. She'd forgive many a prig for stupid things done to flirt with or impress her. But making Marigold cry would never be one of them. But ever still did the future Cornish Duke continue to play around, giving a few other boys chase, making animal noises as he slid the mask back over his face.

But Sybbie's anger only grew, turning to Marigold who was so suddenly and completely torn asunder. The reappearance of the Necromancer in her life again had so ably mired the ballerina in old and deep trauma. That night, during the season, had been many people's first-time hearing about just one of many epic duels Between George "The Comet" Crawley and Professor James Moriarty. But there were only a handful of people standing there that stormy night that knew what Jonah Robinson spoke of in the description of an evil Sorcerer in robes and Voodoo adornments.

There were those in the room that had gone to New Orleans in search of a young boy they loved, and in getting lost in the old streets, heavy with atmosphere and dark things of dreams, some of them were taken by the dark powers. Her purity and innocence having been sniffed out like a dog in heat. And at least one of the three Crawley women within that room had been that beast's captive. Hours had felt like a lifetime under true evil's cold hand that touched her skin and stroked her golden hair. The memory of it, even having been rescued by the boy she loved, made Marigold want to flee far from the ghost of such memories and frightened tactile feelings of ice-cold hands caressing her. When she slept, ever did a dark voice haunt her, whispering all the terrible and horrifying things he would do to her once he murdered her one true love.

It never occurred to Sybbie, it shocked her to never have heard, that the thing that the monster had stolen from George. The challenge to come save this prized treasure in a very public sword fight that went from parade float all the way to the roof tops of the French Quarter. The very duel which George had cut off Professor Moriarty's hand had all been fought to rescue Marigold. The very thought of it made the raven-haired teenage girl's blood run ice cold, made her anxious. It suddenly made sense to why no one, especially Marigold and George, spoke of the climax of the "Bush Wars" in New Orleans. Why no one spoke of when their Granny, Aunt Edith, and Marigold accompanied the American FBI in the rescue of George and his friends from the KKK.

Sybbie hadn't been able to get Jonah's story out of her head of the girl, Lillian Bordeaux, which George had saved. Nor what that monster did to her. Now she could only grieve and shutter in fear of what he must have done to Marigold in the short time that she was his prisoner. But it tore her apart most, because, whatever awful thing she could imagine was at play by the sheer terror in Marigold's mental shut down at the very sight of the mask again.

"George will come for me. George will come for me. George will come for me."

"Knock it off, Edmund!" Sybbie raged over Marigold's little choked sobs of a mantra she recited while she rocked back and forth.

But to the red-hot steel of her voice, right out of the forge, the young man, who was playfully chasing his mates, stopped. But there was something very different about him. He was quite jovial, too jovial, and in his sunny disposition was a large, almost painful too look at, rictus grin that was made of pure cruelty and malice. The rush of adrenaline and exhilaration, magnified by the item he wore, brought out many a great and terrible urges of varied kinds. Most especially were the contrarian feelings of absolute cruelty in concerning Marigold. The quiet sobbing and fear whiffing off such a young and innocent girl of such rare beauty was like the hooking melody of one's favorite song that had to be replayed over and over again. And in Sybbie's anger, he felt the need, the desire, to double down hard, to punish her for … for his delight.

He felt and looked quite like a beast in blood lust - top of the food chain - wanting to tear apart everything in sight to see where these new feeling fit in this new outlook in life. When he rushed forward at Sybbie and Marigold, he made a loud caterwauling noise, raising his arms to scoop them up, jumping at them. He reveled in vicious delight at the sobbed mewling noise the golden ballerina made, while Sybbie had flinched hard, face paler than usual.

**CLICK!**

The entire universe suddenly halted all at once when a sharp metallic noise echoed in the sitting room of Crawley House. Everyone was frozen solid for a moment. They all whirled around to see a figure standing in the doorway. He had a sleek and futuristic revolver, retrofitted and reconstructed by a genius gunsmith named Jiro Sato from its original build as Matthew and Sybil's Webley.

George Crawley had looked disheveled and wore down, his grown out raven curls were wind swept from a long night's ride by motorcycle headlight. He bore a yellowed bruise on his cheekbone. Taped gauze covered a thin gash across his right eye. And his entire left hand, up to his finger joints, was bandaged. It seemed that the last two weeks of his life had not been a pleasant trip. He wore his usual button down and Henley combo covered by his faithful peacoat of beaten leather, collar drawn up in the back. A pair of long leather gauntlets were stuffed in his jacket pocket. A long navy-blue scarf was wrapped and looped around his neck - a piece of clothing inherited from his once beloved friend Ms. Mina Murray. A pair of racing goggles were pushed up to his forehead.

At the sight before him, there came a deep and frightening intensity to his hardened cerulean eyes as he drew his six gun.

The word "deadly" was not an apt description of the young man. The word seemed to betray a demureness that was not fitting for something so "thunder and lightning" in the elemental fierceness within him at what he saw. Had he come home to find his sitting room afire, while his worst enemy in the universe ruthlessly sodomized Lady Grantham, it would not fit with the sheer alarm and violence that torqued every one of George's bruised and weary muscles in sight of the Necromancer.

"Take it off …"

There was a gravelly growl to the youth's cold voice as he held the Head Boy at gun point. It was a look that Sybbie had never seen on George before. She had seen some dangerous and tense situations as his partner. But going toe to toe with a conman in livery, or a group of Whitechapel toughs wasn't nearly the same as the struggles associated with some of the more dangerous villains George crossed blades with while in Africa, Hong Kong, America, and Mexico. In truth, Sybbie had never seen her best friend at the peak of his abilities. The King and Queen refused to allow her to go to New Orleans, and all things considered, she found it a blessing. And when her daddy was kidnapped by mercenaries and taken into Northern Mexico, George had sent Marigold and Sybbie all the way back up to San Antonio, by train, while he and their Aunt Edith went across the border, on horseback, to rescue him. But there was something different about this encounter, something that he knew that they didn't about the item that her boyfriend was wearing as a joke. This wasn't just about touching things that didn't belong to them …

There was something about that mask which was so desperately more serious than even Sybbie realized.

But much to the surprise of everyone, who had chills running down their spine, the future Duke did not comply. Instead he turned toward George and sized him up. The first thing he commented on, in a jovial voice, was that the young man, which everyone talked about like he was some Knight of the Round Table, wasn't _that_ big. Even when their other friends quietly told him to quit messing around and do what he was told, there was an enflamed contrarian sense of combativeness toward his antagonist.

"He's not that big …" The Head Boy kept saying breathily under the mask. It was a repetition that was getting fainter, his stalwart form starting to lean to and fro as if under the influence of strong drink.

" _ **Now**_!" George drew the click of the trigger of his father and aunt's revolver. His voice gave everyone a jump.

"Stop playing around Edmund! The joke's over, this is serious!" Sybbie tried hard to defuse the situation.

"Ed, chap, just let it go!" Marigold's boyfriend whispered. His hands were up in surrender, clear admission to being an intruder and trespasser.

There was a look of disbelief and panic on the faces of those who saw that the mask was starting to glisten in the moonlight as the wobbling figure paced backward in a sickened lurch. There was just the slightest of glaze on the ancient wood that was dark and viscos … like blood. He held his hand up toward a very dark and alert looking George Crawley who was completely at battle stations in every part of his being. Then, with a chuckle that sounded rather pained, the boy gave his supposed rival for Sybbie's affections the middle finger.

"I don't miss, Asshole!" George warned aiming his weapon aggressively.

"Oh …" the boy began to cough out a chortle. "I believe it …" He nodded. The growing perspiration on the mask was starting to form droplets ever so slightly between the scales. "I remember what you did to … _**Hehehehehahaha!**_ " He began laughing, holding his stomach.

Sybbie was horrified as were the rest of the teens. Though he was laughing, his body language spoke of a terrible pain and fear. Suddenly, the boy collapsed onto his hands and knees. It sounded as if his lungs were filled with phlegm, his whole body heaved as if he were retching, though nothing spilled forth. But every time it seemed as if he would scream for help, he only laughed, and after every dry heave, he only laughed harder. It was strange and terrible looking torment that chilled the teenagers' blood in sight of it.

"Ed?"

"Don't go near him!" George halted a larger boy of great girth with an alpha's command that he obeyed without question.

Suddenly, after a long moment of silence … the group, slowly, gathering tentatively in a wide circle around him.

" _ **TADA!"**_

Suddenly the boy shot up to his feet, causing everyone to scramble backward, except George who still had him at gun point. To their fearful reaction the young man only began to laugh with abandon, a perfect mixture of pain and sadistic glee.

The masked figure went quiet, looking nowhere and everywhere in the room as if seeing it for the first time through new eyes. Sybbie shuttered when, slowly, the Head Boy turned his attention toward her, and then fixated on her. She felt so very cold under the darkening and growing abyss of the eye slits. The only comfort of such stupidity and folly had been that she could still see Edmund's eyes. But now, slowly, they were disappearing into a growing shadow.

But what chilled Sybbie's blood most was that he saw right through her, saw everything dark and vile about the things she had done. Being in her presence, alone, was like sipping a good vintage of wine. It could almost feel the sickness of her deeds, giving it just a boost in a home which ever blanketed its full potential to but a whimper. But just a taste of Sybil Branson's sins was like rocket fuel.

But, though Sybbie had never lain eyes upon the Necromancer, there was something in her blood, in her memories, in her very soul that spoke to her. As the song of the Atlantean sword in George's study, there were vague flashes of feelings and images that overtook her. A tower upon a great black hill, it's beauty alluring, yet the soft glow of ghostly hue about it frightened her, and always the howls of Wargs and Werewolves cried to the black starless night. She saw Professor James Moriarty standing upon tall black stairs to a stone throne as she was chained to an altar of evil at its foot. Upon the villain's face was the ceremonial mask. While the only thing left between her and the vile ritual prepared for her beautiful pale body was George Crawley, nine years old, and in his hand was a Rajput blade with Sikh runes upon it. From that moment it seemed, without a doubt, that somewhere in a soul shared by the lives of many women of consequence, that Sybbie knew the Necromancer. And worst of all, and by many names that Sybbie would not know, yet, would feel familiar, The Necromancer knew the beautiful princess whom the girl was the latest incarnation …

And was now fixated upon his ancient enemy's radiance.

"This is your final warning! Take it off, or I swear to God your dusty Duchess of a mother and your San Francisco whore of a granny will weep at your close casket!"

George Crawley's voice was so hard and graveled that it could rip flesh from bone, his posture like a guard dog about to spring forth from a threadbare leash about to snap. The youth's famed six gun was aimed right at the baron's heart, his blue eyes cold and steady, looking much like Lady Mary, maybe too much.

But to the threat the masked figure only tilted his head.

When his voice spoke, it made everyone shutter. It wasn't the same as it was, muffled and jovial. Now it was impossibly deep and bass, covering every inch of the room. To the girl it was like something else was being hosted in his body, speaking to them through her boyfriend. It was a mixture of the two, sorcerer and aristocrat.

Yet, unlike Professor Moriarty, who spoke in gentlemanly tones and archaic manners. There was a lilt of madness, cruelty, and mania in the deep voice of the demonic spirit trying to overtake a young and virial teenage boy's mind. His ancient speech of cunning evil echoed in bass reverberation in hissing whispers behind the words that spoke with the voice and mannerisms of the baron. Though his face was covered, the teen's chest was heaving in pain, his body trembling in fear as an insect caught in the invisible webs of a large gluttonous black spider that slips down to wrap up its new feast.

" _ **I have no doubt … no doubt you'll kill him. You've killed many men Dunedain, mmm, many men. It haunts you doesn't it? You see them still, all those faces of the dead at the end of that 'Ray Gun' of yours? I sometimes wonder what you tell yourself when it's just you, in this house, alone. How you live with all their faces and little last moments before their world went dark? Do they know, these girls here who love you? Do they know about the others? The other people you've killed, boy? Do they know about New York? Do they know what you did to those rich old women? Or would it make the Princess afraid of you … if she knew what you did that night? You know, The Princess was no better than your Aunt Rose was in New York. Did you know what she did the entire night of her sixteenth birthday? When your family had planned such a marvelous party for her … but she never showed up. She told them that she had better things to do. Do you know what that was?"**_

"Shh!"

Sybbie shook her head in pleading despair, running a finger across her lips before putting it over them, trying to shush the frightening figure. The girl had a sudden, child-like, reaction to the threat of the information coming out. "No, please, shhh …" All she could get out was another shush in emotional whimper from the grave humiliation and horror of the memories and actions of that night being spoken aloud to someone she loved most in the world. She could not bear for George to hear of the greatest of darkness and vice that lay heavily over her very soul.

" _ **All night, in between the courses of a great feast and interludes during the dances at a great ball, Lords, Ladies, and dowagers took turns. They'd all 'go up' to find a gorgeous young girl done up beautiful waiting for them on a silk bed of rose pedals, completely naked. Cordially, and in honor of her sixteenth birthday, all the guests left her such fine jewels as tokens before they took their turn at her. By the next morning she had so many 'guests' in the night and morning that had left diamond chokers, necklaces, and bracelets that the 'proud birthday girl' looked like a goddess. Your Grandmother had been looking forward to the date, planning meticulously for months, just for her eldest grandchild's birthday party, and what did she do? She was a rented harem girl for Nazis. But if she only knew, if she only knew what happened in New York, like we do. She thinks you would've saved her if you had been here, not hunting Mexican revolutionaries, or locked away in a Saltillo dungeon. But you and I, you and your Aunt Rose, we know better, don't we? What was it, four, five, old Knickerbocker women that had Rose at a time in New York? Do you want to know how many old women tasted the birthday girl that night or in general that year? Or do you want to know the overall number of both men and women that have had your princess since you've been gone, Dunedain?"**_

Tears flowed down the girl's cheek as she retreated back to Marigold while everyone else shot damning, horrified, or deeply disgusted eyes toward her.

" _ **So how do we play it, boy? Are you gonna go hunt down every Countess, Marchioness, Duchess, and dowager that bought their 'yummy girl' cheap for entertainment on their feminist country retreats with trinkets and attention? Will you wipe out half the House of Lords for the services she provided them with her body? Or are you gonna cut your losses and just put your beautiful Princess down like a sick dog, the way you did poor Lillian?"**_

All eyes, suddenly, quickly, fell on George in shock. They had all been reeling from learning such a disturbing revelation about Sybil Branson. A secret that their parents, half of whom had already 'tasted' the girl, willingly kept from them in hopes of using it as blackmail one day soon to produce a bride for a son in need of a fortune and social standing. But every person who had been in Grantham House's drawing room that one night during the height of the season, who heard Jonah's story, was shaken up even further.

They had all been thinking about young Lillian Bordeaux for months, wondering, even for a beat or two of daydreaming, what the now sixteen-year-old girl of New Orleans class was doing with her life. Somehow, even those who didn't believe Jonah Robinson, felt a ton of bricks fall at their 'friends' accusation that George Crawley had gunned such innocent finery down in cold blood. Even the staunchest friend of Eton would never sink so low as to believe that of George Crawley. But they could only watch in disbelief as a deep and crippling guilt came over the young hero, weakening him greatly in the reminder.

" _ **POP! POP! POP!"**_

The masked figure made mocking gunshot sounds, thumping his chest where the bullets had hit the young girl as if he had been right there when it happened. _**"And down she went, crying the entire time!"**_ He cackled at the irony.

The evil of the mask, of the Necromancer trapped within, was not in the power of the supernatural, but in his understanding of the power of words to the human spirit. Fore, this demon of the ancient world derived power from compliance to his will through shame and the vanity of virtue. Indeed, with the magnification of a single moment, and the twisting of words, it might manipulate honey to venom, finding in any man or woman a single moment of darkness, of regret, and burn them with the sun's own rays through its magnifying glass. For all man sins and all man regrets, and here was where he was vulnerable to evil's call. There was no repentance, no forgiveness, only the void, where the Necromancer ruled all with evil eyes piercing shadow, flesh, and spirit.

And it was merciless to its enemies of old: The reincarnation of the Princess and her chosen champion of her own spent bloodline in this fallen age of man.

" _Please, George, please … it wasn't me, please, you have to believe me!"_ From a young man of eighteen years of age, who spent his entire life in the high streets of London and English Countryside, came the sweetest of innocent Southern American accents of a young girl. _"I'm sorry, please, tell them that I'm sorry … I know I must have done wrong … because, it was you who did it … God forgive me … God, please, forgive me … it must have been my fault!"_ A small voice eked out as she slowly faded away.

There was a demon living somewhere in George Crawley's past … and it struck like a snake, long coiled in wait.

THUNK!

George rushed in unseen with a flash of raging aggression. There was a blank and feral look in his blue eyes as he came at the masked figure. He placed his hand over the Sorcerer's Mask's face and forced the Baron's head back. It gave a mighty thunk that rattled all the items on that side of the room when the back of his skull smashed against the wall. The rage filled youth's fist made a loud thwack against ancient wood, the future Duke's pinned head vibrated like a base board from the absorption of the powerful blow. So violent was the hit that it made everything on the walls of the sitting room shake. And upon the second hit, the painting of George Washington fell with a crash onto the floor from the vibrations through the walls. The Baron slid to a sitting position on the floor, seemingly knocked unconscious from the sheer power of the hammer like blows his head received.

But suddenly, he snapped awake and made a limping and clumsily off kilter crawl. The body moving like a marionette puppet for the door like a cornered cat that sees a path of escape from a narrow alley. Desperation was in some driving force that longed, with every fiber of its evil being, to get outside. It needed to get away from the Boa Constrictor's death grip of Crawley House which it had no power, its corruption suffocated by the virtue and love which Matthew and Isobel Crawley had filled within long ago. But just as it could taste the freedom of ether in the rich darkness that surrounded this English County and those who ruled over it, it was halted.

George snatched the Baron's leg and dragged him back, where his boot met with the head boy's gut. With a violent cough, the peer held his hand up in some subconscious call for a reprieve from the absolute beating he was receiving from George. But there was worse than rage in his adversary's eyes, there was nothing at all. In one display of limitless strength and a loss of sanctity and reason, they had but a taste of what had been unleashed the last time George Crawley did battle with the Necromancer in the City of the Dead.

With a grunted noise of unrestricted anger and effort, George grabbed the other boy by his grey sweater vest and lifted him off his feet. With a spinning heave, he threw the masked youth across the room and headfirst through the heavy frame of the Ku Klux Klan banner. The flag unfurled from the busted glass, the weight of the old silk pulling down the oaken frame that landed with a heavy thud on top of the motionless and bleeding figure that lay on the sitting room floor.

"George!"

Sybbie called in alarm as she watched her best friend begin to stalk with heavy, audible, boot steps toward her boyfriend. But her shock fell on deaf ears. The masked figure was supporting himself on a forearm, his body draped by the very symbol of hate in the American South. With a grip as hard as steel, the masked fiend was clutched by his throat and lifted to his feet. All with just one hand. Once more the room shook when George pinned him to the wall by his pale neck.

With a gruesome gag, the Baron wheezed while, slowly, George began lifting him off the ground. Eton's Head Boy kicked in a panic while slowly being lifted aloft under the flickered eyes of pure murder and hatred. The youth throttled Sybbie's boyfriend one handedly, fingers tightening around his throat.

"I'll break you in half!" The snarl in a feral and uncontrollable torrent of anger was coated in all one memory, one moment, and one split second reaction during that single awful night in New Orleans long ago.

"Sybil, he's killing him!"

"Please!"

"George, stop!"

Suddenly, the noises and gags fell away, the feet stopped kicking. But then, like a reptile that could unhinge body parts, the masked figure leaned in closer to George. From the captured Baron a deep and booming voice began speaking in growled tongues of an aggressive language that no one understood but George. Once more, he stood face to face, and toe to toe, in a battle of wills with a great evil. When everyone else flinched away in fear from the frightening noises it made with an ancient and foreign language that cracked courage like an egg, George Crawley held his ground.

_**"Hark to my words, Dunedain … you will never be rid of me! Forever will my hatred and malice be a shadow upon the heart of you and the Princess's love, and my hatred shall follow all of thine children. Their victories will be fruitless, their joy fleeting, and their love short. Till all of life is but a bitter and dark chasm of sorrow and ruin of a long defeat. You've won today, Captain Foolhardy, but hear my vow that I swear to thee ... When the end comes, all thine House and its valiant heirs will wish they were never born!"** _

And it was on that dark and frigid autumn night - and but once more in the folly of one who loved too greedily and fierce - that a black and vengeful curse was sworn upon the noble House of Grantham and all those yet to be born to it.

* * *

[ **Intermission Music** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY88SYTAuiI&t=85s)


	5. Part IV

[ **("Atlantean Sword" - Basil Poledouris)** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1on_N1R9vc)

_In the muted twilight, blocked by a grey cold obscurity of thin ragged clouds, not a sound echoed through the tangled and forgotten forest. There were no nightingale songs or stray rattling of leaves in the wind. The land remained quiet, undisturbed, lost to the accountancy of time. The only thing found in the still landscape was that to which you brought with you, both of gear and mental anguish. And it was there, in the fading light of a grey day, that a single figure appeared through the nightshade of the tangled snares of the lost woods._

_A single sleek motorcycle traveled through the weeded and overgrown road into stone ruins overtaken by nature. Burnt out husks of hamlets were stained with black soot, while ivy and vine crawled over moldy and greening stone walls where ancient medieval buildings once lined cobble stone streets of a Yorkshire village. Now, near a century later, had it become forgotten to the memory and care of man. The figure halted his futuristic motorcycle at the center of the village where long green jets of ivy now tangled and wrapped, like a venomous serpent, a memorial obelisk. It had been dedicated to all the young men of the village that had fallen in "The Great War" … what they had all thought would be the last._

_The figure sat up straighter on his seat and glanced with covered eyes around the ruins about him._

_He saw the weeds sprouting through cracked and broken cobble roads that led to an ancient stone church half demolished, hanging open like a festering wound. A tree sprouted through the center of the chapel, bursting through medieval stone tiles; its young branches expanding through ancient stained-glass murals. All about the church ruins was a vine eaten and rotting graveyard of eroded headstones leaning and weathering, covered in moss. While weeds and ivy claimed long crumbling crypts._

_Beside the ruins there lay a blackened scorching of a stone wall that protected the last standing structure that remained intact and unmolested by time and age. It was a solitary country cottage, it's iron gates rusted and corroded, warped in damage by something that tried to get in, something powerful. It alone, a charming country Regency house, right next to the skeletal medieval church and an overgrown graveyard, sat unconquered in the center of forgotten village ruins._

_The figure in the peacoat of beaten mahogany leather and a full visor motorcycle helmet studied the house for a moment longer. Upon the walls were the echoed stains of shadowy figures, demonic seeming, monstrous in glance, who were beaten back, with great loss, from an all-out and fierce assault upon the house in an attempt to overtake the defenses of that wholesome place. Now, there remained at the last, untaken, unconquered, the last homely house west of the blighted county. But still abandoned had it ever been, a defiant symbol, but an untenable defense against what lied beyond. Here, behind shut gates and impenetrable nobility was the point of no return. Here was where the darkness stopped and began, held in check by whatever power of righteousness that was left behind by those who had come before in a line still unbroken since that terrible night long ago._

_Then, suddenly, there came a voice in a hushed but deep whisper of a language foul to the ear. It was bore upon the eastern wind that suddenly came on with a black chill that bit. The sound of the gale through the silent ruins seemed like a canon shot that disturbed the sanctity of a cathedral's hallow grounds. The figure in the dark tinted visor helmet snapped his head eastward, his skin crawling at the whispered voice that tattled through the eroded stonework and rustled the ivy leaves with such evil speech in hissing bass. His eyes followed down the weed eaten track of the old road; its path littered with debris of blackened stone that led out of the town to what peril awaited past the gallant last outpost of the noble Regency House._

_It was the first warning, sent out by a brooding figure atop the tallest of gothic towers in the castle beyond. It could feel the presence upon the border, through vile prism eyes. It sensed that someone approached, someone whose blood was called to by the conquered places of its unholy reign. It was the purest of terror sent out in spoken word, a deterrent for this intruder bold to turn away, fore the true master of these forgotten lands lay beyond these overgrown and mossy ruins of stone._

_Yet, with a quiet motor that revved under boot tread on peddle, the sleek bike continued forward past the ruins of the long-lost Village of Downton and, undaunted, the courageous young figure accepted the challenge and entered into the domain of the Necromancer._

For a moment, in the black curse placed upon her children, Sybbie Branson had been swept into a whirlpool of darkness that thrust her into a warped vision. And it was then she found herself right there, traveling many long years to a future undreamed.

But it was then, as if a hot fierceness of a maternal striving in challenge and combat to the dark words and vision in Sybbie's head, there came a sudden and startling pulse at George's breast. His breath caught as what felt like a feminine hand, slender, tender, and warm, had touched his heart lovingly. The comfort was suddenly overwhelming in a sudden impulse that he - and his heirs ever afterward - would never be so sure that they controlled in the years to come in these moments

From inside the inner breast pocket of his jacket, the youth produced a silvery item on a fine chain. There was carbon scoring on the cover, and some wear from exposure to many adventures. The boy's hand shook from the pulsing warmth from the item that he usually wore around his neck. Then, like many times before and since, the wearer of such an artifact found words being called out that he did not know, as if they came to him suddenly, put there by some greater power of the universe that opposed the ancient demon.

" _Aiya Tinuviel Vanima Ancalima!"_

First, the concentric circles of the "Master's Wheel" - which were perfectly etched in superior craftsmanship - began to be shone with a divine light. Then, before the crowded sitting room had time to ponder it, a bright shining glow engulfed what seemed a perfectly normal fob watch on a silver chain. And finally, when he held it aloft, there came a sudden blinding flash of azure silvery light that waxed powerfully with a sharp ringing song of great ethereal beauty.

At first, the group of teens covered their eyes in instinct. But eventually, they uncovered them, seeing, in much wonder and amazement, that such a light did not harm or blind their eyes. For a long beat Sybbie gazed on the glowing relic, thinking that George must have held the whole of a bright full moon in his fist. She had never seen him do this before with the talisman he kept close since they were young, though she had heard stories of what it could do. Yet, she had never believed them till this moment.

The light intensified tenfold, and hallowed by the words spoken, it began to sear and blacken the wood of the mask. Withering under the assault of holy light, the Necromancer tried to escape. But George held his hand to the mask, slamming the back of the host's head against his wall, and holding aloft the artifact in front of its face. And where the light touched the ancient evil, sizzling vapor of foul stench cooked from the mask.

" _ **SCHRREEEEEEEEEEEEECKCCCCKCKCKC!"**_

The noises that escaped from the teenage boy pinned to the wall chilled his boon companions to the bone and broke the terrible sight of the fallen House of Grantham's cursed future from the teenage girl's vision. Meanwhile, the smell off the foul Necromancer intensified and from him came a terrible screeching howl that pierced the group of youths' ears. There was something akin to nails on a chalkboard mixed with how one might have thought a gluttonous and large arachnid might sound as it was roasted over a fire.

Now, in its most weakened state, George sprang again.

With another room rattling slam of the Baron's head against the wall, the young man grasped the bottom end of the mask and began to pry. It seemed comical at first, for there were no straps or elastic buckles that held it in place. It seemed rather 'much ado about nothing' to simply slip the mask off. But there was a deeply straining and a terrible black rage upon George. From the motion of the force that the boy was giving, it looked as if the thing was super glued, or yet, welded onto the Head Boy's face. It was only backed up by the sheer volume of Sybbie's boyfriend's painful scream as his mouth and chin were exposed while the adventurer growled in sheer will. It was an abyss of pain fueled by many dark yesterdays, mistakes, tragedies, and lasting consequences that ever burdened one soul. The many guilty and regretful memories spoken by the masked figure tonight came together to provide a deep well of darkness and hatred that fueled his strength.

In their contest the raven-haired beauty was hit with a wave of colliding power. And from the chill of the shock waves of dueling energy she was sucked under, like a sinking ship's whirlpool, into the vision of a place she knew and yet did not recognize in a future she couldn't fathom.

_Fear choked the country air as darkness fell without a star to break the funneling torrent of tattered black clouds that circled far above the desolate landscape. As far as the eye could see there was tall grass, brown and yellow, that covered the once fertile green moors and rolling hillsides. The barbwire fencing was rusted and eroded, snapping here and there, rotting in the dead glades of poisoned land that lay beyond the ruins of a country village of stone. There the stillness of the quieted rural desolation hung heavy upon the lungs, heart, and soul as the emptiness weighed with a density that grew the closer one approached to 'its' nearness. The shadow of the demon's dread power seeped into everything, rotting what it touched to the very core. Near a century of unchecked dominion had twisted the countryside into a dead and decaying wasteland of what this once cherished soil had been for many a century._

_There, atop a hill at a crossroads marked by a dead grey tree, the figure halted his motorcycle and looked out over the land. Pocking the swaying dead grass and tall weeds were patches of dust and in them lay the bones of dead livestock. Once, long ago, the appearance of sheep and cattle could be found grazing, dotting the wholesome green fields that surrounded the estate. Now their remains lay strewn in loose soil which dusted the dead moors like sauntering smoke in the bone chilling gales that whipped out of the east. In the rushing air a foul smell of sweetly decay, a gouted decadence that was rich with the taste of rot, perforated the estate grounds. It was an unbearable corruption that soured the stomach and greened the digestion. The fumes seemed poisonous and noxious beyond countenance. It was but one more deterrent to the outlander, one more desecration to consecrate the conquest. And yet, the young figure removed his helmet and was once more undaunted as he paced away from his bike, hanging his helmet on the handle. Before him was a site that he had long been warned away from … but still had it ever lived in his blood so closely._

_In the distance, overshadowed by the tall wooded peak of "Spectacle Rock", was a single gothic castle of grand baring._

_Downton Abbey stood tall and stalwart in growing dark. Atop the spires of its tall towers were tattered and torn banners. Once an Abbey built in times of the failing Roman Empire, having survived turmoil, the scouring of a cruel Saxon prince, and the blasphemies of the Tudor reign. It had served as home and beacon of pride to a noble family of aristocracy that was caught in the slow vice of time. With its tall towers and regal majesty, the castle seemed to be the beating heart of a community._

_But now it stood in the darkness and woeful desolation of the befouled fair lands that once ringed it. Its tall gothic spires shown like blackened spears that touched the tops of the funneling clouds that hung heavy above this approximation of Bald Mountain. Unlike the rest of the county and the village in ruins, the Gothic castle seemed untouched._

_From its appearance in the distance, there came a sense of newness, of rebirth, as if the manor was rebuilt, or recast in a new mold. The stones were smooth and unblemished, and the dark spires upon its tall towers shined sharply. Downton Abbey glowed in the darkness, and yet this came from no such source of reflection of neither violet and orange twilight, nor the soft glow of moonlight that rose beyond the single peak of Spectacle Rock. Instead, the glowing sheen had come from Downton itself. It was dimmed, sickly sallow as a plague-stricken corpse, casting no light._

_Instead, there was but a deep emptiness, hollow and abandoned, that projected with its sickly pale glow across the fields of dusty tall grass and weeds. Inside Downton Abbey there was nothing, not life, light, nor the soul of the old-world finery and traditions of English Culture. Instead, within its windows, there was nothing but a yawning chasm of impenetrable darkness in which nothing earthly could pierce. Yet, within this dreary and exceeding antiquity there remained one focal point in which all derived._

_Atop the tallest tower window, there was one single gleaming light, flicking in a multi-colored hue which shined in a muted white in the rushed vanity of its boastful diversity. In this doomed wasteland, filled with fear, fumes, and desecration, it drew attention as a magnificent gem might in an iron crown upon a tyrant's brow. Fore, the master of these lands, through rights of conquest, lusted after all beauty in its greed and hatred of an insatiable hunger._

_These nihilistic subversions of avarice bred a cruelty in which all in the Necromancer's domain rotted and corroded. Ever was its fleeting delight to misshapen and corrupt all it touched, while hording jewels, gems, and beautiful finery to itself, in hatred and need. Fore a bottomless void of emptiness lay where a heart and soul should've been. Thus, it was iforever n a tormented pain of rage, hatred, and lust. And long did it look out emptily upon the ruins of all it destroyed, upon the skeletons of the lives it took, and ever did it curse the fleeting meaninglessness that came in hearing the languished cries of the enslaved souls at its whim. Fore, no victory seemed ever complete, nor had the land fully been conquered, because, nothing would ever be enough to satisfy the beast._

_The heavy looming clouds began to funnel above the pale castle, the rumble of thunder echoed in forking flashes of lightning that violently struck the tall spires of the Gothic manor house. Lit sparks fluttered down in colored embers from weather worn and faded silk flags that lay limply at their peaks. The young man's presence had roused to wrath the dread dark powers who could not yet daunt him._

[ _("Speak for the Dead" - Daniel Pemberton)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLd32oip7lw)

_The valiant and steadfast figure stood upon the crossroads marked by a dead grey tree, watching the earthly violence as lightning rented the sky and the fell wind had swept dust in poisonous cyclones upon the wastes. It was with grim eyes that he watched this show of power, this challenge, fore there was now no hiding it, masking his presence. The Necromancer knew who it was that had come into his domain, who was not daunted by warnings, and with unmatched courage and arrogance stood undeterred upon his land, having come so armed with old weapons that were forged to do evil much harm._

_For a moment, it was as if Sybbie was standing right by his side. Could see him so clearly. He was tall, maybe the tallest man she had ever seen. He was also darker in complexion than others, though not in a racial or ethnic way, but surely not a tan of an Englishman. But all the same, the teenage beauty found that even upon sight of him, she felt her heart quiver, becoming so immediately and completely overwhelmed with a deep and true love that swelled inside her. Fore it was, in all that made this young man, that there was but a piece, a stolen feature, of everyone who she held dearest above all things._

_He had her Aunt Edith and Marigold's emerald eyes, their mama and George's eyebrows and jawline, and a face that was so very much like Sybbie's own in masculine that they could've been identical twins. He wore his raven curls of Cora Crawley's genetic legacy grown out nearly long, tussled, and parted to the side. He also bore upon his strong jaw an appealingly rugged unshaven scruff. Of most, the man seemed of bearing to the style that George preferred as well, with longer locks and stubble. It was, as it had been told to her, in remembrance to the ancient men of the West and their sunken continent of old in the many ages undreamed of man's pre-history. However, unknown then to Sybbie, that of his style was but the usual grooming of valiant and hardy men of bitter exile. Men whose line of nobility lay unbroken from father to son since the days of Lady Elfstone, to the sinking of the Titanic, and the fall of Downton Abbey near Seventy years prior._

_But most of all, upon his person, was much that she recognized, though not as fully at first._

_The handsome young man wore George's leather peacoat of mahogany, but the coat looked and seemed old now. The sinfully supple leather was cracking and rented upon the shoulders. The sleeves and across the back bared scars from blades and bullets from a multitude of decades in service. While there was scorch and scoring from burns stained deeply in the material. The jacket that had become - and will always be - so synonymous with George "The Comet" Crawley fit the young man as if it had been tailored to him. But from the wear and damage to the beloved coat, it looked as if it had passed down generations, worn through many battles, adventures, victories, and horrible tragedies spanning nearly a century._

_About his neck on a tarnished and well-worn chain of fading silver was the same fob watch that George just had in his hand. But now, like the jacket, it seemed old and worn. The silver was chipped in places, and just off the center there was a large dent in the "Master's Wheel" engraving. It was the lasting scar of a deadly bullet from a Viet Cong militant which had been deflected during an ambush in the opening moments of the "Tet Offensive" … saving the life of the current owner's grandfather many long years ago. Yet, despite the damage, the worn and use of what looked like decades, the sacred symbol etched in superior craftsmanship glowed azure at the gates to the halls of the usurper._

_For a long moment Sybbie watched him with captured breath and heart. He was … precious to her. Though she had no explanation for why. But it occurred to her immediately that it was not lust, infatuation, or romance which he captured her so. It was some new love, some new emotions to her unexperienced. It was most akin to how she felt about her daddy and mama, but so much more powerful than even that - if it could be believed. With everything inside of her, the girl wanted to take him in her arms and hold him, kiss him and love him fiercely. She wanted no harm, misfortune, or even discomfort to befall him. He, in a moment of madness of the heart, belonged to Sybbie. He was hers to protect, to cherish, to love. She felt that even an instant of falter in his heart might be the death of her, that any ill luck would drive her to war to make it all right._

_That was the reason she tensed when she saw him walk back to that amazing mechanical marvel he rode._

_There, slipped and harnessed under metallic black plating of the sleek motorcycle, was a very familiar Samurai sword. She knew what she would see before he even drew it from the scabbard with an enchanted and majestic ring of metal. The long Katana nearly vibrated in the intensity of azure light that gleamed from the hallow blade. In the black gloom of the desolated wastelands about Downton, it seemed a single star shining through inky black obscurity. But the sword that she saw was not the same that sat naked and polished in Crawley House's study. Like the peacoat and fob watch, the sword was worn and aged with use. There were scars, nicks, and chips upon the silvery blade. On George's display had been a sword that was held in high honor, and for use at the very last of need. That same sword, near a century past, bore scars telling of battle, too many than its masters had cared to remember._

_Something deep within Sybbie told the tale that this was not a novel concept, nor was the handsome young man the first to bring this sacred blade to this place. The Katana had already been wielded in duels by his forefathers on their own crusades to drive the evil from Downton Abbey. It had slashed, parried, and felled the dark master of these lands while in the hand of Kendo and Battojutsu masters who all fought bravely. Yet, as told by scars and nicks upon the glowing blade, all of these duels had ended in defeats, narrow escapes, and even death. Their weapons and heirlooms passed down to sons, much too young, who mourned dead fathers who left no grave or body to be buried. Their hate and need for revenge kindled in their hearts as the Necromancer's curse circled once more the wheels of fate, till compounded years of tragedy and sorrow would once more ignite a fey madness in the next valiant and honorable exiled heir of the House of Grantham. Then, in despair and rage, they would, like their fathers before them, find themselves at the stone ruins and wasteland before a haunted Gothic castle to call forth in challenge the evil that consumed their ancestral home._

_Each desperate to achieve the greatest deed wrought by the descendants of Lady Elfstone since Captain George and_ _**Lady Sybil Crawley** _ _penetrated the deepest levels of Wewelsburg Castle alone during the height of Nazi power and mysticism in the Second World War._

_But, Sybbie Branson knew none of this, nor the context of this dark future. Indeed, all she knew, in a flash of intuition, was that the young man she so suddenly loved with great fierceness was carrying the wrong sword. In her mind, in a flash of provenance, she was suddenly reminded of the book, the Downton Abbey Chronicle. It had been there, on the secret page written in 'Star Runes'. It had been in the beautiful language spoken by Marigold possessed by ethereal spirt. The sword in the pedestal, at the old fortress atop Spectacle Rock. The Celtic and Roman blade shown in the illuminated pages at the base of a druid's tree in a courtyard of stone. It had been the sword that George had tried to retrieve preemptively months ago, only to be defeated by whatever evil guardian kept it from righteous hands._

_She watched him clutch the katana, giving one last deep glance to the corrupted ancestral home. There was a look of sorrow, of resignation, and fey temperament in his lonely stare out at the heart of this evil wasteland. Sybbie knew not what brought him here, nor what matter had broken his heart so to throw away his life so rashly. But whatever it been, if he only knew that she loved him so, if he only knew that she was there to take him in her arms and hold him, to protect him from all things. But instead, he looked down at the glowing blade, its many scars and damages from other fights, some his own, others from fathers and grandfathers before. Then, with a sad scoff of mirth he shook his head._

" _The Riddle of Steel"_

_He whispered against the fell wind rising about him. Then, Sybbie watched as he stabbed the Katana in the loose soil by the grey tree and bent to a knee, his left sword hand gripping the handle. In that moment, head bowed, he looked much like a knight of old, saying a prayer, before going into battle against the chiefest of all dragons._

" _Pater sancte, guide gladius meus, in toto corde, et male defensus ferrum a suis tenebris._ _"_

' _Holy Father, guide my sword to evil's heart and shield me from its dark blade.' Sybbie knew exactly what it had meant. Fore it was the small prayer that she had heard George speak often before a fight. It did not matter if he carried a blade, 'The Ray Gun', or even if he went in for a brawl. But it was never said lightly, nor for just anything. It only was said when it really mattered, when a question of life or death was in the air, and a need for great valor and action was at hand. Thus, it came to the beauty standing by the young man's side that his mind was set, and he would go through with his challenge._

_Then, with all of her heart, the girl wished to stop the young man before her. She would jump upon his back, pull on his elbow, and cling to his waist with all of her might. He was carrying the wrong sword! He was going the wrong way! She could not bear it, could not see him, this person so precious to her, submit, playout the final battle in this long defeat. He was the last of them, of all the people she loved, of Mama, Aunt Edith, Marigold, and George … and he was the last of herself, her last child. She wept, trying desperately to think of something, anything, that might stop him as he got to his feet again and passed to his motorcycle._

" _Stop! Please! Don't do this! I love you! Pleahehease! I LOVE YOU!"_

Suddenly _,_ in her cries of despair, the nightmare world of this dystopian future dissipated when the Baron collapsed lifelessly as the mask finally went flying, clattering loudly in the center of the sitting room.

Suddenly, the room began to darken, as the brilliant ethereal light of the artifact in George's hand began to dim till it was extinguished, its powers no longer needed. Then, there was a long and still silence as the many wondrous and horrible things seen and heard in that small deadly moment of time settled. The shocked minds of the companions that had intruded on a place not meant for them, were frozen. Slowly - with a flock mentality – they all, in unison, began to approach the future Cornish Duke that lay crumpled on the floor.

"Get back!"

The adventurer's primal voice echoed powerfully in the country house when he snapped at the group of young men that tried to come to their mate's aid. They watched as George hung his fob watch back around his neck like a talisman and left the room quickly. Heeding George's orders, as if he was a great captain to which they feared and loved, they did not get closer. But still did they gather about at a safe distance and observed the young man at their feet.

"Good God!"

From that moment the room was suddenly filled with gasped horror at the reveal of the young chap newly freed. He was deathly pale, every single vein that a human had in their face was swollen and visible through his fine porcelain skin. They had the look of the darkest of blues in their swollen arteries. It was a shuttering and frightening sight to see on any human being. More so, the enlarged and exposed capillaries spoke to where the glossy perspiration on the mask came from. It seemed more parasitic than symbiotic, the mask of man-eating bark, devouring its host body and soul. Just as distressing were the boy's eyes, whose irises were sucked to the back of his head, showing nothing but blood shot whites. It was unsure as to if this was due to the intense choking or some other influence of evil.

When George returned, he had a very old Spanish crucifix in hand. They all watched as he slid on his knees to the side of the youth that he had just given a beat down too. It seemed night and day, the black hearted rogue, to the shining knight that knelt by the Baron's side. He lifted the old nun's cross in hand up to his own forehead, pressing to it hard as he quietly spoke solemn words in Latin. They all thought he had lost his mind as he whispered holy chants with eyes squeezed shut. Then, without a warning, the youth slapped the figure of the Holy Cross down upon the other aristocratic boy's forehead.

George closed his eyes again, whispering some ancient incantation of Christian blessing as he pressed the cross to the other teen's forehead. They thought it all Papist nonsense at first, till they saw that the veins on the Baron's face began to recede, and then disappear. His lids fluttered closed for a beat or two, then, with a violent coughing fit, his eyes flew open with the irises returned to normal. George removed the old Conquistador Crucifix from the boy's head and leaned away on his back foot as the Head Boy violently flipped himself over, getting to his knees, head planted on Lady Merton's old rug, hands rubbing at his throat desperately.

His attacker and savior got back to his feet, tossing the old relic of Catholic faith on an end table. The sigh of relief from the room was cut short, when Marigold's boyfriend was ripped from his knees at his cousin's side and lifted off his feet. The junior polo champion, feet dangling mid-air, was brought to eye level by George who looked cold and perilous beyond all sight and description.

"You scrape that son of a bitch off my floor, and you get the hell out of my father's house!" His tone was gravelly and barely restrained. "And if I ever catch you or any one of your effeminate little shit birds even breathing in this direction, I'll kill you." With a loud and cruel slam on the floor, George flung down the underclassman hard. "I'll kill you …" He repeated with a nodding promise at the host of looks he got in alarm.

There was no fight or pride saving words needed by those who just witnessed something that they'd deny ever happened for the rest of their lives. Yet, their dreams would ever be haunted by it. They quickly hauled up their ringleader, wrapping his arms around their shoulders. As a group they absconded out of Crawley House, never to set foot inside again …

Not for all the tea in China.

Soon enough the three Grantham grandchildren were alone in the dark house. Sybbie had her back against the wall as silence once more claimed the rooms. The girl's cerulean eyes were considerably shaken, not only from the terrifying things she just saw, but from the visions of a future yet to be had. In her mind, though fading quickly, she could still see the mysterious young hero, her future, their future. She felt, in her heart, that she had touched something that gave her a true meaning, a love so fulfilling that it might have dwarfed everything great and small that she might yet accomplish in her life. Fore it was, for just a fleeting moment, that Sybbie Branson had tasted the divine cordial of motherhood in its purest form. Even when it had been a grandchild, perhaps even a great-grandchild, it did not change how deep the love ran in Sybbie for him. It was a sentiment shared by all the past lives that dwelt in the girl's soul.

And yet, from it, she also experienced the anguish of the despair in one she loved so. It had been a bitter sorrow, so lonely a heart, that had been borne in a future grandchild that felt there was no other path forward. That terrible and cruel had been the fate of the Crawley family, that upon his heart he felt so keenly the utter demise and final ruin of the House of Grantham in their long defeat. So hopeless and desperate had he become that he was mastered by a fey wrath that consumed him to the last. And though this had not yet happened, the existence of this dashing and valiant hero was not even a twinkle in their souls as of yet, it seemed to Sybbie that such a thing had already happened. There was an odd, stony, quality to the doom of their family, unmovable, unchanging. And it saddened the great beauty's heart and turned her soul sallow and dim in the shadows of the sitting room.

But still, as the memories of her premonition faded, sweeping from her mind like the moonlit tides, the comfort of Crawley house, of the surroundings, in time, did much to sooth her, to center her. There was a tonic to one standing in a place that she conceived to be as much her home as the very place she was born. But when she turned, she found that George was crouching over the discarded mask.

A shaky and bandaged hand reached out to pick it up. But just inches away … he halted. His eyes squeezed shut in a shot of what looked like pain, of either memory or physical ache of some sort. He took a deep breath and continued to stare at it. From where the girl was standing, it seemed strange. It was a lifeless, empty, shell of Ancient African wood that lay harmlessly on the floor like a cheap sundry. It could've easily been mistaken for some misplaced decoration of a themed room. Sybbie watched as George slowly retracted his hand, resting it on his knee, with a worn shake of his head. He scrubbed his face with his hands, before he stood, leaving the mask idle in the middle of the room.

More than words, or action, it was in that one quiet interaction that spoke volumes of the long and bloody history of hatred between a young man and the evil Black Sorcerer trapped within the discarded item.

He turned and began pacing toward a shaken Marigold who had yet to let her guard down, sniffling in the corner. Sybbie had an uneasy smirk when she anticipated his eyes to fall over her. She had not fully forgotten the vision, nor the feelings of dread and terror at the evil place that Downton Abbey seemed doomed to become in the future. But more so, seeing George, brought to mind how close of kin the young hero in her vision was to the youth before her. They dressed the same, wore their matching locks the same, and even wore the distinguishing items, jacket and fob watch. There was no denying that whither Grandson or Great-Grandson. That young man with her face and George's baring was their child together.

It was then, that some secret emotion, hidden from the world for many long years, surfaced. Felt so strongly since she was a girl, yet, so bitterly in his long absence in her life. But now, it seemed so hard to contain in that moment. These feelings that she locked away, refused to reveal at any cost, had come to the forefront of her heart. There was a future, a moment in time, dimming by the second in her foresight, in which they would come together. That her love, a love that she knew was forbidden, would be reciprocated, even for just one night, in which they might conceive a link in the chain that leads to a descendant, strong and valiant, that shared their features. Perhaps it was part of the curse, that a union, not illegal in the Imperium for people like them, but certainly morally reprehensible to those they loved, was part of the Necromancer's curse.

Yet, she could not find a moment to dread such a thing. For certainly, Sybbie Branson, no matter her higher ambitions in life yet unlived, believed that she would always be at George's side the rest of their lives. Fore, she was broken, used, abused, and thoroughly played out by the rest of the world. But, as it seemed to her, there remained only one person in her world, who truly loved her, who would love her despite her vile wonton wickedness in many things she had done. And she could think of nothing more comforting than to reward George's faithfulness to her, beyond hope, than to give him a child, a son - an heir for their House.

It was a damaged logic to a terribly damaged beauty, anchored tentatively to life by one young adventurer's unconditional love.

But she felt a deep pang of hurt when his glance passed over her as if she wasn't there at all. As he walked toward the girls, it was all in his posture, that he did not acknowledge the presence of Sybbie at all. It was not the time for it, and deep down, she knew that. But a part of her couldn't help but feel indignant. She cast some parlance of blame upon the young man's shoulders. This happened, because, he thought that she was too demure, too weak, to handle the tough stuff, the danger. If he had trusted her more, if he included her, they wouldn't be here.

"Hey!"

Sybbie was stern voiced and hurt as she grabbed George's forearm as he tried to breeze past her.

THUMP!

Before the girl could even tighten her grip on the leather of his sleeve, the boy grabbed her arm off him. Then, with extremely heightened aggression, he grabbed handfuls of Sybbie's white blouse and shoved her on top of the end table. Their picture, mail, and the Queen of the Nile's dagger clattered to the floor. Her eyes were wide in shock and surprise as George pinned her to the wall, her dark blue pencil skirt caught on the end table that she was sitting on. The boy bared his teeth in a black rage that was directed solely at Sybbie

"Do you have any idea! Any idea … an inkling, you ignorant Asshole!" He roared in her face.

"Fuck off!" Sybbie snapped at him defensively with a sudden fright. She attempted to free herself, but George had her dead to rights.

"Do you know what you could've done!?" He shook her violently. "Do you know what you could've set loose!?" He raged. "Goddamn it, Sybbie!" His voice broke for a moment, desperation, fear, lacing his words, making Sybbie's defensive struggle end with a sympathetic lilt to her sad demure eyes. "Our family, our friends, Jesus Christ, girl! Granny, Vicki, Uncle Tom, Anna, Thomas, Mom … they all live here! Do you know what could've happened if that thing had gotten out of this house?!" He pointed toward the front door. "Do you want that on your conscious? Huh? You want to trade the lives of everyone we love just so you could show off to your dipshit boyfriend?!" He roared.

"That's not what happened! And it wouldn't have happened if you had just taken me with you!" She pushed him off her.

George looked ready to explode. "This isn't a game, Sybbie!" He roared at her. "This isn't a night of playing grab ass with your mama's boys! People get hurt; people die … And all it takes is one mistake …!" He put a single digit in front of her face. "One stupid, little, mistake! Do you know how many people could've died, tonight? Do you know how many people that could've died for weeks, months, years after the fact? It doesn't just kill you! It doesn't just kill your friends! It kills everyone that ever knew you and everyone who ever loved you! It won't stop till it erases you and your very memory from existence!" He was so angry he was shaking.

Then, for the final time, the flashes of her vision crossed her cerulean eyes. The initial shock of what she saw wore off, then, suddenly came quiet but strong emotions that threatened to tear her apart. In George's words she saw flashes of the ruins of the village of Downton. The burned-out buildings of stone she saw most every day. Their skeletal stone walls wrapped in ivy and moss all along main street, weeds and vines uprooting cobble stone streets that she walked even now to get here. Then, there were the piles and piles of skulls, human, friends and neighbors. It had been a massacre, no one would be spared. No one left to tell tale of the House of Grantham, the stories of Church Bazaars, Cricket Matches, Lady Mary and Lady Edith's carriage rides to the church for their weddings. People lining the sidewalks with waving flags and cheers, now lying in heaps of clothed and charred bones. The memory of this place, summer in bloom, and the green paradise of the grand and lush countryside, forgotten forever. The very memories of this beautiful gem nestled deep in Northern England hunted to extinction till there was only darkness and fear. The roads would be closed off, redirected away from such a terrible and vile place of sickness and dread by those who heard tale of what happened. Then, all would be lost, the memories, the beauty, and the great love found there.

Then, Sybbie's heart sickened with fear and a black sorrow that did much damage to a soul. Fore, she wondered, suddenly, what had happened to those she loved. What would happen to her daddy, to Mama, to Donk and Granny? What had become of Aunt Edith and Marigold that night? Did Thomas survive? Did Anna and Mr. Bates make it out when it happened? Or were their charred bones to be found in that darkness within that ghoulish corruption of her childhood home? But worst of all, she knew that even if her and George's boy would have victory that night, beyond all hope looked for … it would all be for naught. Fore, though he might free their home, break the curse of the Necromancer, and banish its great evil utterly. Never again would Downton Abbey, nor the County Grantham, ever be restored. The poison and corruption of the land would be too great, the castle felled forever. Then, whether in triumph or defeat, would Downton Abbey never again be a clean place. It would be abandoned to time and nature ever afterward, lost to all knowledge and care in the dimming years of past ages.

As the memory faded, dark emotions overwhelmed the sorrowing and fragile teenage beauty, then, with all will power put forth, she banished all she saw with deep desperation … and forgot.

With an aggressive push, the girl got in George's face. "It, it, it … it's a mask, George! You killed Professor Moriarty! He got in your head and made you think things that aren't there! He did it to Mr. Holmes and Doctor Watson! He did it to MI6 and "The League". And he did it to you for years!" The girl roared back. "You're not on the Nautilus anymore! Or in some New Orleans catacombs looking for Grandmamma's ruby! This is Downton, this is our home, there are no monsters infused in masks, or Mexican bandits hiding in the woods! For God's sake, listen to yourself, George!" The girl was furious and afraid of everything still tapping the back of her mind. "You always do this! You always set people's teeth on edge! Everyone can move on, learn to live with what life gives them! But no, not George Crawley! He locks himself up in his study, shadow boxing every piece of shite who ever gave him a sour look, lionizing them till they're some made up voodoo demon trapped in a mask! Not some sadistic wanker who was jealous, because, _**I love you**_! And you'll condemn and damn anyone who has the temerity to suggest that you let it go!" She screamed right in his face.

"You ignorant piece of Belgravia trash!" George snarled bitterly. "This might be hard for you to grasp, _Princess_ , since you don't have any … but when you have friends, real friends, you see them beyond society functions and Granny's dumbass dinner parties! They're your friends because they stick with you through thick and thin, see you through the worst of life! When you have no one else, you have them!" He met Sybbie's aggression. "So, when something _kills_ one of them, you don't take it on the chin and move on! And when you get one of them killed, you don't put on a stiff upper lip and move on!

"You work twice a month at Uncle Tom's auto shop with the grease monkeys. You drive down to Bath and Brighton on holiday with Marigold and Vicki. And you think you know something about the world, huh?! You play girl-toy to half the gentry, so that they could throw their family heirlooms and sons at you! And you think you know something about hardship?! Huh?! I've seen suffering, I've starved on the Llano Estacado, and I was imprisoned in Saltillo with the worst criminals in Mexico for the life of a Turk that died here, years before we were born! I've seen small children bury their parents on the side of the road on the way to California, entire wedding parties lynched by the Klan, because, a Southern Belle had fallen in love with a Catholic! I've killed men, and I've heard them dying! I've watched my friends die and held them in my arms as they cried for their mama till their very last breath, and I buried them with my own two hands … on their TENTH BIRTHDAY! I know the real world! And I'll tell you right now, that it's not this fake ass fantasy land that the King and Queen crafted for you in their court in Buckingham Palace! Where you play dress up in mom's clothes and think you're something, because, you're the first girl to get a couple of engineering degrees on the wall! And all, because, you sucked off a Dean at his granddaughter's eighth birthday party cause some actor Nazi shit-bird told you too! So, don't talk at me about what is and isn't out there in the world, or what I need to let go, because, you don't know a _Goddamn_ thing about it, girl!"

The boy didn't hold back, not once. He had become fiercely angry in a way that only a person who loves someone beyond reason could be when pushed to the edge by fear for them. The two were so close to one another that their breath hotly steamed their sweat covered faces as if they were staring into a ventilation pipe. But George fell in self-disappointment when he saw Sybbie's heart break in the glassy fallen look at his heated words. They both went after each other's weaknesses, but the fight was never fair, even on a level playing field. George had spent his entire life taking the worst brunt of people's assumptions of him, always knowing what people had said about him in mock and insult. He had an incredibly thick skin and could take almost anything said about him, even by those he still, begrudgingly, loved.

But Sybbie wasn't that way and had never been.

She was an incredibly sensitive and tender-hearted girl when it came to those she loved. There had been plenty of people who had said terrible things about her, and she couldn't care less. But the first criticism or stinging chastisement from her family, from the people she did love, could irreparably damage her. And George, even in his anger, had always tempered himself to not cross the line. But this time, he was laid bare after two weeks of danger only to find himself home, confronted by his worst nightmare. In his weariness, injuries, and incredible alarm, he did not guard his words. But he knew it was a mistake when the tears came falling freely from Sybbie's eyes.

"I hate you …" She whispered vulnerably.

But when he reached for her in a moment of seeking forgiveness, she shoved him away from her. "I hate you!" she screamed in a half sob as she strode out of the sitting room, marching down the hall toward the front door. When she felt George following her, she turned, taking a frame from the wall and throwing it at him. He moved out of the way easily as the picture made a crunching sound on the hall rug.

"Yeah?!" George scoffed in renewed anger at the aggressive action. "Well I hate you right back, you spoiled bitch!" he roared at her.

Sybbie threw open the front door with a hard slam, turning vengefully back on him. She looked to be in terrible pain at the words he said to her, but more importantly, the pent-up anger of the feeling of abandonment. She had thought they were partners, that they'd spend the rest of their lives doing everything together. But in the last few weeks, she had felt as if he was gone again. That he had left her all alone once more. The girl, still recovering from such terrible life choices made too young, still unsure about where she stood with their family, believed that he was the only home she had. And in the days of his absence, she grew greatly afraid of all her sins folding in on her. Without him there to hold her hand, his strength to support her, she felt vulnerable and so terribly alone. The posh beauty would take the most ardent of danger by the most heinous of creature, vile villain, or Nazi, then be left alone with her thoughts and memories of her wickedness. In that moment, she saw his departure and words on his return as a betrayal, and she couldn't take it, couldn't live with the things he said to her. So Sybbie Branson did what she had always done best …

Get the first shot off before her heart could be broken.

"I wish you never came home!" She cried. "We'd all have been happier if you just stayed gone …. Better yet …" She stopped herself at a sob.

Something dark and incredibly sad moved across George's eyes when she paused. "Say it …" George said quietly, clearing his throat of emotion. "Go on, say it!" He snapped at her. Instead the girl only ran out of the dark hallway and onto the front lawn. George followed her to the doorway, watching as she braced herself on the rounded garden table, crying hard, overturning an old rusted white chair on the cobble stone in her torrent of emotions.

"Go on …" George baited angrily. "Go on, say it, you goddamn coward!" he roared at the girl in the bitter autumn air.

"I wish you died!" She screamed at him. "We'd all be better off if you died in Africa, Atlantis, or America! We'd all be so much happier! Things would be easier, if you had just died!" Her voice was hoarse from such a primal and painful admission of such evil thoughts. Immediately, the girl covered her own mouth in speaking such horrible things that were killing her soul.

George only scoffed, eyes hurt deeply, deeper than they had ever been. "You know, when you're right, you're right, Syb …" He nodded.

His agreeing hurt worse than anything else he could've said in retort.

Seeing the deep pain in his eyes, the sound of her own voice echoing that she had wished that George had died, it killed her inside. It made her feel much, if not incredibly worse, than all the times after sex. Her belly or lower back slickened with seed, feminine fingers or tongues giving the last lingering stroke to her womanhood. The high of her glorious release was gone with nothing left but the smell and shame that lingered afterward. Their hands had always grabbed and petted her flesh, kissing and suckling her, their panting ministrations of afterglow's affection that made her cry. She had wanted to throw up, to hide away, as they always wanted more, never realizing, not caring, that the madness had passed, and this sultry young beauty in their bed did not want to do it again. She was not their whore, their bed slave, yet they treated her as such, and made her remember it through the night. They paid her in priceless heirlooms, pieces that had been in their families for generations, just for a night with her. And thus, they believed that she was their property, to do with as they will till they ran out of things to give … and take from her.

She felt the way she did a year ago at her vanity, Anna fastening a new diamond choker to her pale throat. Granny, so naïve and loving, complementing on how lovely it looked on her, asking where she got it from with a proud smile at her little girl. To be in the room with two women she loved greatly and being reminded of the answer. To be on the silk bed covered in rose peddles while Lord and Lady Rothsguard debated if they wanted to share the sweat slickened and panting naked girl posed seductively on the bed or take turns with her. Even perhaps, maybe, they'd invite Lady Rothsguard's nephew up so they might get it all done in one go so not to miss the important gossip.

She had remembered the blasé way the old Countess threw the diamond choker at "The Nazi Slut", like she was giving six pence to a homeless waif. All the while her fat, middle aged, nephew assured his uncle that his grandmamma's jewelry would not go to waste. His confidence shown in the worshipful lapping of the sweat off the sensitive girl's navel, claiming that the Celtic goddess would earn every sparkle of her soon to be step-papa's price. She remembered gasping tenderly, seeing the Lord and Lady pour themselves some brandy. She heard them gossiping casually about their fellow guests while they watched 'the show', the old lord checking his time piece in boredom, waiting for their turn with her.

It was sometime after Granny had left her and Anna was done, that Thomas nearly jumped out of his skin. He had been sent up to check on why Sybbie hadn't come down to the library yet, with dinner moments away. When he entered the girl's room, he found her on the ledge of her open window, tears streaming down her face, the choker in silk gloved hand. She had thrown quite the fit when Thomas pulled her off, wrestling her to the floor of her bedroom. She sobbed long and helplessly into his chest as the butler held her. The tender-hearted man behind his cracked walls of sarcasm and bitterness was in tears of his own, rocking her back and forth, telling her that she was a good girl. He reminded the broken young beauty that she was one of his only true friends and begged her not to leave him. Thomas Barrow, of all the people in Downton Abbey, knew how such a young jewel felt. He preached to her, smoothing her hair paternally, that she mustn't be defeated by 'them'. He would always be on her side, he and Master George. That the young Captain would be home someday, and they'd all be happy again.

Until then, his precious girl had to live in order to show that she was stronger than all of them.

But all of those memories paled compared to how she felt having said what she had to George. All she could do then was remember Thomas's words to her that night. All she could do was rip her soul asunder in the echoes of such terrible things said to a person she had only ever loved so desperately. She didn't know what to do, what to say, all she knew was that she had screamed the very opposite of what her heart and soul knew to be true. But in the hurt that cut deep, too deep, in George's eyes, she was so horribly ashamed for using the one thing she knew could hurt him and stabbing him in the heart with it in the heat of a childish tantrum.

George's teeth gritted as he took a few steps forward to watch Sybbie retreat from his paces. There were a thousand violent things he wished to retaliate against her with for doing and saying everything she had tonight. But instead, he picked up a rock out of the garden as the girl backed away. Finally, his advance into the yard caused the crying girl, mouth still covered, to flee. It was all she thought she could do. A viciously angry and terribly broken-hearted George sprang after her as she ran down the driveway and fled past the gate, disappearing behind the outer wall of the house.

The young man slid, with the scraping crackle of gravel on stone, to a halt outside the gate. In the distance he saw the figure of a teenage girl in white blouse with red trimmed collar and sleeves, dark blue skirt, and red satin bow in her long locks, flee for Downton Abbey. George wound up and chucked his rock over her shoulder, denting a scorched and bullet riddled ancient newspaper box right in front of her. The girl was so taken aback by the distance, power, and accuracy of the boy's arm that she fell to the sidewalk.

"Try not to get bent over in an alley for a pair of some great-aunt's pearl earrings!" He shouted rancorously into the distance.

His jaw set grimly when he saw Sybbie cover her face with her hands, dejectedly sitting on the broken sidewalk weeping amongst the ruins. He tried as coldly as possible to ignore the teenage girl sobbing on the cracked and splintered concrete in front of the newspaper box. He shuffled up the driveway of Crawley House, still hearing the girl he loved sob in the distance. It was like someone putting his hand to an open flame. His whole body resisted the idea of what he was trying to do. He couldn't just walk away like he didn't care. The image alone, of Sybbie sitting on the sidewalk crying all by herself in the dark of their long-destroyed home village, it was more than he could bear.

The boy clutched his heart in pain as he squeezed his eyes shut. He felt a wave of sickness inside of him, reflecting on the things he said to her. It went against everything that he was, to abandon a girl he loved like this. He leaned his head heavily on the weatherworn wall in front of Crawley House, her crying echoing down the empty and rotted stone street. With a pained wince he moved to go back to the door, channeling Lady Mary to his very being. But it was no use. It was not in him to treat one he loved the way he had been all his life. With a teary-eyed sigh as he glanced to the sky of millions of twinkling stars overhead, he turned back.

But when George walked past the rusted gate, he saw that he was not needed. The polo champion, Marigold's boyfriend, who ran off, had magically reappeared. Had he broken off from the retreat back to the Abbey in order to go back and fetch Marigold? Had it been to apologize for his cousin's stupidity? Or was it to challenge George to a fight, in order to regain his family's honor in sight of the girls they wished to be their wives? Whatever the reason, it was not more important than stopping to help a sobbing girl on the sidewalk. George watched from the distance as the dashing young athlete scooped the girl into his arms. The youth felt a pang of hurt to see her nuzzle her tear stained face into the crook of his chest, arm thrown around his neck.

Eyes closed in disappointment with a sigh, he watched as the moon lit the figures on the way back to Downton Abbey. He knew it. Deep down in his blood, he knew it should've been him. He should've been the one to go and get her back and tell her how very sorry he was for everything. But it was too late now. It had been left between them with the worst words that could be spoken. And it was not for the first time in his life, did George know how that felt. For the last meaningful interaction with someone you loved more than life itself to be in the throes of such painful circumstances.

But there was nothing for it now …

[ _("Valiant & Valiant" – Alan Silvestri)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-7lvINrYPw)

Slowly, defeated, he made the lifetime's length walk back to Crawley House. He trudged up the driveway and past his parked motorcycle. He set his Gram's garden chair back upright before he entered the house once more. He and Sybbie had left the door open in the heat of the fight. George gave one last longing look to the gate, hoping, beyond hope, that he would see her come back. But after a long moment, he knew, after what they had said, she wouldn't.

The door made a soft noise as he slowly closed it, letting the warm darkness of his shortly lived childhood home rush over him. After the last two weeks, the quiet stillness of the cozy house should have been a welcome relief after so many nights sleeping above Jonah's Nightclub. But somehow it felt empty on a Friday night. His feet treaded tiredly as he picked up the picture frame that lay face down on the hall carpet. He turned it over and looked on it familiarly.

" **The Nobility of Nobility: Young Sleuths Crack Cat Burglar Case"**

Among the headline showed a black and white photo of proof. George and Sybbie were pictured standing in the middle of a York street in front of a department store. The two were posing playfully against one another, both holding sacks filled with jewelry, with two of the thief's unlit cigars in their mouths. Behind them was a smoking hatchback that was crashed headfirst into a light pole. Tied there had been the figure of a skinny and unconscious Frenchman who wore a form fitting leather body suit and the most luxurious of mustaches.

George only smirked sadly in memory of Sergeant Willis telling him that it was the only arrest in the history of the York Police Department in which the crook not only confessed to the crime but also his love to the one who caught him. Sybbie had knocked the Frenchman silly with a toaster during a spirited and skilled fist fight with George in the appliances section. Though he had escaped, the concussion from the toaster had caused the thief to crash his get-away car into a light pole. But they soon came to ponder if she might have knocked something loose entirely. Both teens stood by while the gentleman thief got away from the police long enough to drop to his knees and propose marriage to Sybbie. He claimed that the toaster was a sign from heaven itself that she was the love of his life.

George had decked 'Romeo' unconscious at Sybbie's feet. The boy claiming "it was a sign alright, that something popped out of that toaster, and it sure as hell wasn't any goddamn bread …" as they watched the police pick the thief up and toss him into the back of the wagon.

But even months later, every Friday morning, Sybbie liked to dump her weekend luggage on George's bedroom floor. When she saw that he hadn't flinched, she would get a mischievous grin, climbing into bed with him. She would always decide to wake him with the soft seductive crooning of the gentleman thief's latest love letter to her in George's ear. The pros - more outrageous than the Frenchman's mustache - always made George sleepily look over his shoulder with a tired squinting face of disbelief. But Sybbie would only giggle as he took his pillow and placed it over his head as she'd skip to 'the best parts'. When she was done, she'd always pretend to take a draft of a cigarette after such a 'spirited' letter. With a big grin, she would then burrow her head under George's pillow seal and begin to make cutesy noises and voices of nonsense that she knew annoyed him. But when he pushed her face out of his from under the pillow in sleepy agitation, the girl would suddenly start climbing all over him under the covers. She proclaimed loudly, in a scandalous French accent, that the romance from the letter was too strong. She demanded that George must, absolutely, Make Love to her that very instant.

Venus would be offended if he didn't.

Though George would rather resign his fate to being turned into a mythological monster, for ten minutes more of sleep, eventually he fought back. What would follow became a loud and jovial roughhousing and wrestling match that ended with George pinning Sybbie. With an objecting giggle from his prisoner, George would flop on top of her and go back to sleep. For a few minutes she would half-heartedly try to escape from underneath with protested moans of effort. But, eventually, she always surrendered with a playful groan and give a sigh of resignation. The two would eventually drift asleep peacefully into the later morning hours. George's head pillowed on the bosom of her satin nightgown, and the girl's arms wrapped around his head, threading her fingers through his fairly grown out curls as she slept.

It was on such mornings that a teenage girl's very soul had been saved from the brink. It was the only kind of physical interaction and play, which ended so blessedly wholesome and loving. No one, be it male or female, young or old, would blink in taking the opportunity to turn the jovial interaction into something sexual. Whether it was flipping her over and grinding against her bum, slipping down her satin night slip to her hips to taste her breasts, or stroke and pet her between her legs in preparation for tasting such a lovely girl. In those moments, it never occurred to George, not once, to do such a thing. He only knew that he needed her, loved her, and that she loved and needed him just as much. Sybbie needed his arms and bed to help her forget all of those mistakes she had made in her past. In those mornings they always came together. Listening to a girl's steady heartbeats, feeling her peaceful breath lift and lower his head as he pillowed against her belly, was but a human lifeline that made him forget, for just a while longer, of the many regrets and sorrows of the last decade of his life.

And he already missed it, missed her.

Staring at the headline in the frame, he felt a deep well of sorrow for what had been said and done. But that sorrow was washed away by the flicker in the corner of his eye from the hall. He saw a passing shadow in the sitting room. George could feel the sudden and dangerous build-up of anxiety that threatened to explode. A ripple of intensity coiled his muscles tightly like the torqueing pressure on a spring. The frame was hanging back on the hall peg, the boy's fist clenched to do battle.

It was an old training, an old habit that he could be eighty-five years old and still never break. A boy that was hunted from Fifth Avenue to the Tennessee Mountains by Pinkertons and Ku Klux Klansmen. A Ranger who learned how to stay in the shadows, move low and fast, and make no sound before he struck by Captain Allan Quartermain and the greatest huntsmen of the Imakandi Tribe of Darkest Africa. He could and had followed outlaw bands and marauding Klansmen for miles through desert, swamp, forest, and foothill without being seen or heard, that was, until it was too late … for them.

It was a skill that came completely natural now, even in times of peaceful country living. He had ever been accused of 'sneaking up' on people when they turned unawares to find him behind them with casual ease. And he was more than ready to fight the newest intruder that had arrived, or had never left, or even worse, had come to swipe the item that must never again leave Crawley House.

But just as he was about to pounce, he stopped cold. He halted in the doorway, eyes softened and sorrowful.

The moon had been freed from its cloudy prison and shined anew, pushing back darkness and shadow in the light of the first harvest glow of the season. The golden rays of the bloated lantern in the night sky lent its clarity through the tall and wide windows of the sitting room. Their filtration through the frosted and stain glass patches gave it an odd color that looked as if you could almost reach out and touch the beams in solid form. But the strange effect was only heightened by their perfect mixture that fell over a single figure that stood in the middle of the room. The patterns of the light glimmered off the shining net of Marigold's golden hair, as if it was made of moon beams itself. Her pale features softened in the cornucopia of color that shined upon her face, sundress, and mama's pearls.

All anger, fear, and hatred fell away in George's heart in sight of this angel in the moonlight. After months, years, of exile and seclusion from the nearness of her, he had forgotten of the power, the purity, and beauty of his unattainable but ever the faithful and noble Guinevere. The pain seemed to grow stronger the nearer he was to her after so long a separation, out of practice of holding back everything of an old life, an old promise that would now never come true. Inside, the feelings of overwhelming love clashed with the heavier sinking of the great doom that loomed, now, gregariously over every interaction.

People had always found it odd, especially his family, that George could identify someone by the sound of their footsteps. His granny and Aunt Edith always had a bombastically amused reaction to being addressed the moment either had entered a room while his back was turned. It was another long list of survivalist instinct that was drilled into a boy in his long experience in the wilds of the world, sleeping in Hooverville's, and his imprisonment and escape from Saltillo. It was a skill that had saved his life more than once over the years. But it was different between him and Marigold. No one had ever been able to understand it, not since they were children. For all the times that George and Sybbie had been described as twins, it had been George and Marigold that had always had an acute sixth sense toward one another.

At all times, in close quarters, or even down the street, the two had always known, sensed when the other was close. They could be in a crowded room and still be able to know where the other was, and not only find each other, but lock eyes in the same moment. When they were younger George had always said that it was just a sign from God that they were meant to be. That it only meant that they were written in the stars, like his parents had been. But now that the truth had come out, maybe that great gift of conjoined souls could now be nothing but the cruelty of a genetically scientific explanation that neither wanted to ponder any closer.

But, either way, all of George's stealth meant nothing while in the presence of Marigold.

"I don't hear it anymore …" Her words were soft and sad.

In the moonlight that fell gently over her ethereal form, the beautiful ballerina had the mask in her hands. Her emerald eyes were staring deeply and intently at the item as if there was nothing else in the world. To this, George immediately tensed again at, possibly, the most nightmarish scene he couldn't have even thought of if he tried. The intensity of the way Marigold looked into the mask, made George's hairs stand on end. He moved forward slowly, hand reaching out.

"Angel …" He harkened to her seriously and cautiously by her old nickname, back when she was a ward of the family, in another life.

The girl tilted her head. "It's alright, George …" She said. "I …" she shook her head; a look of traumatic emotion was on her face. "I don't hear it anymore." She said again as a single tear fell from her eye.

Slowly, George came up behind her, her back placed against his chest. It hurt all the more to be reminded how perfect they fit together. Their bodies almost made to connect on so many levels. Even just the way they looked in a frame was something right out of an Arthurian painting of the classical romantic period. Slowly, he reached across her and took the mask in one hand. But the girl wouldn't let go of it. She only stared at the scaly and horned visage that had lived in her darkest thoughts for so long. Her mind still polluted with words, evil and terrifying, spoken as certainties to the fate of a frightened young girl who was reminded so very often by the villain how so very pretty she was … and how he was going to enjoy ruining her.

"It's alright, Angel." George whispered in her ear as they both gripped the mask tightly in their hands. "It's alright …" He nodded as the girl's hand shook.

"No, it's fine, because, I don't hear it anymore … not anymore." Her voice broke a moment. "It doesn't have anything to say to me anymore." She shook her head.

"It never will again, I promise …" He replied. "I'll never let it hurt you again." He risked a gentle brush of his knuckle across her wetted milky cheek.

"It was never me that I was afraid it would hurt." She admitted. Then, slowly, she chanced a look over her shoulder at the handsome young man behind her. "It was never myself that I was afraid for … it was never me." She whispered in a half sob.

"It never got the chance …"

George paused before the boastful and guarded lie left his throat. He only had to look at Marigold to know that it wasn't them. When he was with Sybbie, Granny, Anna, and certainly in the rare moments when he was alone with his mom, he could play the confident and cocky youth. The unbreakable man without fear that everyone saw him as. But when he was with Marigold, George Crawley found himself quite unable to lie to her. It wasn't in him to play it all off as something that was in the past, something that rolled right off his back. Emerald eyes shined vulnerably as she waited for him to finish his thought.

"I'm, uh … I'm still here." He nodded comfortingly. His words neither confirmed nor denied the level of hurt and torment that one ancient item had given a young man. Nor could it ever cover the steep price he paid and would continue to pay in guarding and containing such an evil.

Slowly, inch by inch, the girl allowed the words, and the boy's presence, loosen her hold on the item. Eventually, she let the mask slip out of her control. She watched as George held it in his own hands, gripping it hard. Immediately he tensed, his eyes squinted shut, as if he had received a rather sharp ache of the head. For a long moment a great fear screwed her belly and chest tightly as she watched the momentary but primal battle of wills. But with a sudden flutter of the eyes, the young man's body eased loose, his grip lightening on the seemingly empty shell.

There were theories as to why George Crawley, and George Crawley alone, could assert a level of mastery over the mask. It could be said that being the only one in existence who had ever bested it in combat had merit. Another theory, which may have had held more water than the other, was that he was born of a great love. There was a power to the wholesome purity of a union of two soul mates, which blessed the very stardust of the universe that made a young man. And though long forgotten to mother and son of such things, it was, none the less, true that Matthew and Mary Crawley's greatest prayer and dream was to bring George into existence. And from this dream they conceived a wanted and loved child that stood as the testament and embodiment of all the happiness, heartbreak, and joy of two people that loved one another madly. Thus, it was within George Crawley's very being that he had the greatest of deterrents to darkness's outside sway and influence. Much like Crawley House itself, one could never underestimate the power of a true love, or the strength of its touch in those who were created by it.

But if you were to ask George, he would break it down to the most cynical answer. The mask thrived on fear and doubt from inside one's own mind. But for the young man who had seen much, too much, in his young life. There were sounds, visions, and sights most awful and frightening, the darkest to be found in human suffering, cruelty, and inequity, which would forever live inside the boy's head. They were horrors most terrible that even the Necromancer could not withstand for long …

Fore it was that George Crawley's mind was not a pleasant place to be.

Marigold watched as George took the rosary on the table and walked down the hallway. He stopped into the study a moment, before going down into a pitch-black cellar basement under the staircase, creaking old steps echoing with shrill squeals down the dark descent that he took casually. For a long time, there was no sound at all, and Marigold was starting to worry. But, then, she had nearly jumped out of her sundress when she heard a loud slam of a heavy cabinet door after what sounded like a struggle. But as the moments passed, she felt a great weight and shadow of threat lift off her heart.

Though, she had never once felt the threat of her safety within the confines of the homely house. She did not deny that she was incredibly afraid to walk out the door, as if there was some dark creature of Hell loitering outside the walls, waiting to devour her and everyone else whole. Now, she felt a great burden in the night dissolve, and with it, the dark mark on the county was removed. A great stillness and provincial peace seemed to return to the homely house by the church ruins and overgrown graveyard. There was a brighter tint, almost loving comfort, to the hallways, when George ascended the stairs. She watched as the youth took a key and locked the old cellar. In his hands were tattered and burnt Kanji scrolls that he clenched in his fist tightly.

"Who did that?" She asked as George went inside his study.

"I did …"

"No, I meant, who burned …"

"I did …"

The girl frowned, following the boy into the lamp lit study. He slipped off his goggles from his forehead and removed his long supple leather gauntlets from his jacket pocket. With casual ease, he tossed them and the Kanji scripts down on the table on top a leather map and next to his father's old army compass. Tired cerulean eyes looked stricken with sadness while he undid the looped and pulled scarf that once belonged to Ms. Mina Murray around his neck. Quietly, he wrapped the navy-blue material around the Black Dragon's armor's gorget and swept around the end. Marigold watched him unbuckle his weapon's belt, wrapping the leather ends and silver buckle around the gun holster and knife sheath, dumping it next to the goggles, gauntlets, and Shinto scripts. The heavy, custom, retrofitted Webley and Apache Bowie Knife, used liberally in the last two weeks, made a loud noise as it slid atop a leather medieval map of the Spanish City of _Guernica_.

"I don't understand?" The girl pressed.

George just blinked as he removed his leather coat - won in a battle of wits between a young outlaw and an ancient and immortal queen. Its mahogany beaten leather made from the hide of a creature to which the world believed never to have existed in the first place. It was sinfully supple to the touch, impossibly comfortable to wear, and harder than the most well-crafted suit of high-end mail. Though the years it had become like a second skin to the boy. And ever afterward, in all things he did, it would become synonymously tied to him and those of his descendants afterward.

"I gave it an opening, and it took it." He draped the jacket over the shoulder plates of their ancestor's armor. "It feeds on negative emotions, and lord knows there's enough to go around here." He grabbed up the burnt scripts. "It wasn't a lot, but it was enough, just enough to lure someone with the right envious and bitter attitude down there." He swiveled the reading lamp from the desk toward him, using the light to study the damage to the browned strips.

"Can it happen again?" She asked worriedly.

"No …" George shook his head in distraction. "I applied more powerful prayer notes, and even then, it over played its hand." He paused a moment. "Now it's licking its wounds, biding its time …" He replied darkly.

"For what?" She took a step closer to him.

The question caused George to halt. To his ever-internal objections, he couldn't stop himself from looking into Marigold's eyes. His mind was filled with the prophecy that the mask spoke of and the doom that would follow. He couldn't deny how easy it was to believe the truth spoken in the dark curse of doom that was cast over them. Even now it was so hard to stay away, to not reach out and take her in his arms so desperately. Not when she was so close. One could easily dismiss dark words spoken of a prideful evil, but George couldn't deny the very love that still lived inside him.

Yet, he was not so fully unaware that defying prophecy, changing one's life to spite it, might be exactly the path that leads to the destined event. So, all that he had in his power to do, whether it was true or false, was wait and see. But he did so knowing that it was simply impossible. He was so sure that he could never take Marigold into his arms and into his bed, not now, not ever. No matter how many long nights he dreamt of waking up in the morning and seeing her soft features in the first light of the day, to feel her curled in his arms at peace with the world and safe. They both ever walked a tight rope of strong and uncontrollable emotions. Their souls clenched in fear of one false step in chasing longing and justice for a life-long love born in the innocence of childhood which would lead to a long drop into an abyss that had no end.

It should've been enough to deter the power of these lasting feelings …

It should've been a warning that would haunt every interaction he had with the ballerina across from him. But one could not simply turn off a lifetime of longing and love based on bandied words of a fork tongued serpent who dealt in deceit and deception as stock and trade. Nor even in light of the great secret of Lady Edith Pelham, which neither of the two children she loved most in the world could have ever dreamed was possible. Even now both occupants stood ready at a stray touch, a soft word, and the right shimmer of moonlight, to throw it all away for just one last kiss, one last touch. They'd gladly sell the lion share of their family's dignity for one last moment to relive all the unhappy yesterdays which an evening sun set upon with a certainty of a dream of better tomorrows in each other's arms.

"What is it waiting for?"

"A train that don't come."

There was nothing but pain and conflict in George's gruff reply as he walked away from the girl that was tearing him apart with every sacred heartbeat in her pale chest. With a creak, he settled into his father's chair. The weariness of the last two weeks, the fight at the museum, and the things done and said at his home had finally caught up with him. His whole body ached, and there was a great fog that clouded his mind, leaving him groping for a path that was nowhere to be found. All he could hear was a mask's curse and the cruel words that Sybbie had said to him. All he felt was the shame and torment of that which he retaliated with against his only link to his family he had left. The chair creaked again as he slouched back, arm raised on the leather arm rest, forefinger and thumb pinching the bridge of his nose. There was no hiding a deep sorrow and shame that fell over him as he still saw the figure of Sybbie sitting in the dark, weeping all alone. Neither could he shield the sight of the beautiful perfection of Marigold in the moonlight.

"George …" He couldn't see Marigold, but he heard a catch in her voice. "Did you …?" She began but stopped.

"Did I what?"

"Did …" She was quiet and sad. "Did you kill her?" She asked softly. "Did you really kill Lillian Bordeaux?" her voice was almost a whisper in the great and terrible anticipation of an answer.

[ _("The Castle of Time" – Joe Hisaishi)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBHbECwx_Sg)

Slowly, with another creak of the chair, George's head lifted off his hand in wonder and amazement.

Lillian Bordeaux had been a name that George had not heard in many long years. Not even Jonah and the rest of the boys spoke of her. Even when they reminisced about the old days, telling war stories, it was the one name always left out. No one who had been there, that knew her, could find the heart to speak about her. In truth, it seemed wrong that someone so good and pure, kind and sweet, had been made taboo. It was a crime that was only superseded by the great abomination and tragedy of her ever-desecrated resting place where she may never be forgotten, but never remembered for whom and what she truly was.

All he knew was when the Necromancer spoke of it, the memories, and the vocal recreation of her fateful last moments had sent him into a black rage. It wasn't fitting for it to speak her name, to even think of her, not after what it had done. The simple utterance of that sweet girl from his beloved's rosy lips took all of the fight out of the young man, his eyes gleaming like broken fragments of a mirror as he stared into the empty darkness of the fireplace hearth.

"There are many things in my life that I will never discuss … and what happened that night would be at the top."

George spoke with a sorrowful voice as he stared into the dark of the empty fireplace. He did not look at her. Apart of him, maybe a masculine part, maybe a part that hardened on the wintery streets of Depression stricken New York, the chain gangs of Western Tennessee, or the darkest dungeons of Saltillo. But he could not look at Marigold. He could not show her the vulnerability that was in his eyes. Even in the safety of his father and grandmother's house, in their childhood home, he didn't feel safe to show weakness.

George Crawley had a thousand-mile stare into the darkness. His shoulders slumped in an old pain which had aged him greatly in both body and soul. There were no physical scars, no crippled limb. But, none the less, there was a very visible wound that lay deep inside a once valiant heart. It was a wound which no medicine or rest could ever heal, its pain was plain as day in the deep grief that fell upon a young man's face in sudden memories. It wasn't that Marigold had not earned the right to hear the story. If anything, there was no one on this earth who could understand better than the young ballerina. But it was simply that George couldn't bear to speak of it, not for the sorrow, but the shame and conflict of a single moment's reflex that could not be taken back. But what he was afraid most of all was not blame, but forgiveness. He feared allowing someone to forgive him, when he would never be sure if he or anyone else had that right …

Fore, there was no one left living that could absolve him of one split second reflex made too fast.

A deep quiet filled Crawley House. In George's slumped figure it showed nothing but confusion, sorrow, and suffering of many tragedies. He was filled with many a great fear, which had been proven wrong a million times. But after the death of a baby sister and a young girl in New Orleans, he was blinded. He had spent too many years alone, sharing drinks with his demons, rather than his victories. There had been too many hardships seen without a comforting hand to tell him that it would be alright. He had built his life on the crumbling pillars of a mother's venomous look one Christmas morning and an Aunt's desperate lie to keep her wanted and loved child close to her. In his trust on these many false beliefs, on the great weight that he put on these things, both pillars had collapsed under him. Now, George Crawley found himself returning to Downton in a fog of a world in which nothing made sense anymore.

There were tears running down Marigold's cheeks that she couldn't hide. From George's figure in the dark came everything she knew well, for it was how she felt. There was nothing. Her entire life felt empty, felt incomplete. Every day, Granny, Uncle Tom, Sybbie, Aunt Rose, they all told her how happy they were that she was officially apart of the family. A day didn't go by in which someone lovingly kissed her forehead, petted her hair, or rubbed her back. They acted as if this truth was the apex of joy, what they wanted, only dreamed for her all her life. And it should've been. A good girl should've been overjoyed to have the life she had, to be loved so completely. But still, in the night, she cried for the penniless ward of a doting Aunt, fore that girl had all the love and a future that she dreamt of in her saddest and most troubled moments. She dreamt of this house, this room, at this time of the night. With the man she loved sitting in his father's chair, speaking to her of his most guarded secrets, knowing that he loved her enough to place his trust in her. Now, he closed himself off from her, because, he knew that in this new world, she was the heiress of the Marchioness of Hexham, not his Marigold, not his Angel.

There was a deep and shared empathy in emerald eyes as she glassily watched the person she will love forever suffer quietly. She wanted to go to him, to take him in her arms. But still did she flinch at the prospect, knowing his mind, and the fear of just a touch which could cause her to lose all sense of right and wrong. It was hard to hold back, but she only wished for him to know that whatever had happened, she could never hate him for it. There was a whole universe of deeds, tragedies, and mistakes that Marigold Crawley could never hold against George. Fore she knew him, better than he knew himself most days. It was a limitless gallantry which dictated a young man's life that she trusted. George would choose death before dishonor to himself and his principles. And in that certainty, which went down to the very microscopic membranes that constructed the universe inside and outside her being. There was no evil or malice within the heart of this golden Guinevere's most honorable and tormented Lancelot.

But instead of what her heart spoke of her to do, she walked away. Heavy was the heart that would make the short, but hardest, trek back to Downton Abbey. There was nothing left to say. All the words that could have been spoken had been concealed. Now, there was only the business of facing the night and the many melancholy and dreary wandering miles of the mind. Roads that strayed into the realm of 'what could have been' and 'what should've been' that came in the darkest hours of Queen Mab's domain.

They would remain the many midnight ponderings of a lone young man that sat in his father's chair staring broodingly into the darkness.

**_END OF ACT I_ **

* * *

**Entr'acte Music**

[ _("The Necromancer" – Rush)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JphWi_GOIao)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editorial Notes:
> 
> The origins of the Necromancer, "The Princess", and the Fob Watch is told in the Prelude to the story series "Medhel an Gwyns"
> 
> More background information on The Death of Caroline Talbot, George's duel with Alemdar Pamuk in Rhode Island, the "Grantham County Masacre", and the Exile of George to America is told in the Prequel stories "The Creggan White Hare" and "The Folks Who Live on the Hill"
> 
> Also, the aforementioned Cornish holdings of Reginald, Matthew, and George Crawley: The derelict mine - Wheal Grace, the ruins of the Trenwith Estate, and the ancestral home of the minor line of the Crawley family – Nampara House. Are all from the TV Show (and Books) "Poldark" Of which the principle characters - Ross, Demelza, and Elizabeth - Matthew and George descend from directly in this Downton Abbey Expanded Universe. As is Isobel directly descended from Dwight and Caroline as her maiden name is Ms. Isobel Enys of Killewarren.
> 
> I felt that I outta put that out there in case someone complained I'm creating some sort of PBS Masterpiece Theater Cinematic Universe and not telling anyone.


	6. Interlude - The Star of the County Grantham

**Months Ago**

In the Season of 1936, there were many topics of fascination that percolated through London. The Spanish War, the coming grandeur of the Berlin Olympics that the Third Reich was planning, and - of course - the Grantham County Power Plant. It seemed a strange topic - all things considered - but it was the details that most people were interested in. It was the first, fully modern, electrical plant in all of Yorkshire. Which was a feat in itself. But the more interesting aspect had been that the power coils and generators, which cranked out a much more powerful and efficient charge, had been designed by Ms. Sybil Branson herself.

Never before had such a thing been attempted by a grown woman, much less, by a girl who was yet to have even been presented to the new king … which ever brother that might be these days. There were many that doubted the validity and safety of these mad plans presented. Some called it the very apex of what it is to spoil a child. What qualifications did Sybil Branson have to take on such an experimental task? They warned Lord Grantham of the perils. He being, not only the grandfather, but one of the trusties of the new plant, along with his daughter Mary and Grandson George Crawley - who also had his reservations.

But George's troubles were for other reasons than a lack of faith in his best friend.

It had been an uphill battle for the girl. She worked long and hard on her plans and blueprints, living in the quiet exclusivity of Crawley House, away from the distractions of Downton Abbey life. There were many long nights. George had been hunched over the study table pouring over ancient medieval maps and dusty texts in Aramaic and German. Meanwhile, over at his desk, a lovely girl scribbled her formulas and calculations. She sipped coffee, pencil behind her ear, soothing her doubts in the smiling picture of both her mummy and mama on George's desk. Every time she had misgivings about the enterprise, feeling that George wasn't voicing some objection, if only to spare her. She only had to see the two women that were everything to her and remind herself that if they could be revolutionary in their time, then so could she. The only thing she wished was that there was someone to tell her she was on the right track. The old professors - like all good Englishmen - were afraid of change. The board of directors was biting their nails in anticipation, for good or ill, of the young girl's designs.

Her family wasn't any help either. George had an idea of what her plans were – being educated of many things in the years aboard the Nautilus - but recused himself of opinion all the same, much to her anger. Donk pretended he knew about what his gorgeous genius was talking about. And Mama just smiled and blinked, making it seem all so encouraging by kissing her on the cheek with as much enthusiasm as Lady Mary Crawley showed anything. But Daddy didn't hear a word. Tom Branson would soon glaze over at his daughter's passion, spending more time glowing proudly at his rare and special girl rather than the plans spread out before them. God, in those moments, had he wished Sybil had been there to see what a marvelous creature she gave her life to bring into this world. But when he began stroking her hair, the girl would only huff and bump his chest with her shoulder in chastisement of his distracted mind.

When the time came to present to the board, she was going up against two other firms in the whole Imperium. She fretted all night, wondering what she should wear. She had kept her Aunt Rose, Mrs. Baxter, and Granny up half the night, raiding her, Aunt Rose, and even Granny's wardrobes for just the right clothes. Just when it seemed all hope was lost, she came into her room to find that Mama and Anna were laying out a new outfit for such an occasion. Lady Mary told the girl, with great arrogance, that she might not know how her daughter's "Contraptions" might work, but she jolly well knew how to dress for success. Both her mama and Anna swore it as "the ticket", the secret weapon she needed to get over the top. It was true that when she stepped out of her daddy's car with Thomas Barrow - her temporary assistant - there was not a snappier looking young engineer in the world. With legs born for those high heels, body meant for that satin skirt, and combination of sunglasses and hat that oozed young and professional.

When she arrived with Donk's suitcase, rolled blueprints under arm, and coolly confident smirk, she was the talk of the Ripon office building. However, she was shaken to see one of the other firm's lead engineers talking to George and their Uncle Atticus privately. Atticus Aldridge, Lord of Sinderby, had been the guardian and manager of George's investments for many years. And at present he was the current manager of the Grantham Estate, till George could legally take possession of the profits when he 'officially' came of age. In truth, legally, it was Lord Sinderby who was the creditor for the Estate. But no matter how he was bribed, their uncle still ran things over with George once a month, making Lord Grantham absolutely furious when he heard the word 'no' more than he ever heard yes from his heir.

The project leader for the firm she had knew to be Freddie Moorsum. He had been a talented, and much vaulted, engineer that had credited her Grandfather with his first steps into his profession. He claimed that he been sponsored by Lord Grantham through Ripon Grammar soon after the war. However, she saw at dinner the other night that when her mama mentioned that Freddie Moorsum was one of the lead engineers presenting, Donk had gotten a very strange look in his eyes. He remained quiet throughout dinner, seemingly bothered by something that took his mind far afield in regret. But when Sybbie snuggled to him on the sofa, saying that if he was going to start brooding too, that he should start a new support group with George. The old man only smiled and kissed her head …

It was the few times in her life that she pondered if Donk actually saw Sybbie, or if it was the ghost of his young wife in the firelight shadows on her lovely face.

However, it did pique her interest to see this man that gave Lord Grantham all the credit in the world, and yet, was someone that Donk avoided at all costs. However, she arrived to see the aftermath of his presentation. It was odd to see a grown man seemingly pleading a matter of what looked like life and death with a very conflicted George, a boy a whole quarter his age. The youth was listening intently, eyes downcast thoughtfully, head nodding, and his arms crossed. But when he saw Sybbie enter the room, he placed a hand on the older man's shoulder, telling him that he and Atticus would 'think on it'. But when she went up to ask him, suspiciously, of what that business was about. George only replied that it was 'none of hers', before he walked into the board room. Their Uncle Atticus gave her a kiss on the cheek for luck as he followed George inside, the two clearly talking over their secret conundrum in hush.

The words of the day were affordable, modern, and easy to maintain. Sybbie - with Thomas's help - presented her new machine to the world. Every weapon at her disposal was used on the board. She smirked at Donk, used Mama's familiar turn of phrase to entice her. She near abused her credit as a daughter of a 'working class bloke' on those who valued such things. And for everyone else … well, Sybil Branson had been and would always be quite the enchantingly beautiful thing. But it was her charm that won the day, for it was considerable and inebriating once she got going. A girl fostered for six years in the Royal Court was born to turn heads with her wit and social skills that rivaled the queens and princesses of old. But in the end, she found that the only hold out was George. He sat quietly, forefinger curled under nose, thumb under chin, elbow propped on the arm rest. He was a sphinx, unreadable, hardened to every trick employed by the lovely and fashionable girl. And when she was done, soaking in the standing ovation with a relieved smile, her heart sank to see that George was the only one still sitting, the weight of the world in his eyes.

For two days, the girl showed up to wait outside the deliberations. She paced the hallway, idly played a walking game of hopscotch with the linoleum tiling and sat with her hand intertwined in Thomas's in her lap as they stared at the door. But on the final day, suddenly, that door flew open to the sound of George matching shouts with their Donk and a waspish mama.

"Then, I'll see you in Hell!"

The Earl and his sleek daughter looked shocked and deeply insulted at George's final retort to Lady Mary's parting words. Sybbie was also shocked watching a dark and furious George stalking away. His goggles were already on his forehead, while he shoved his hands into his long and supple leather gauntlets in disgust. Suddenly, papers and plans fell to the linoleum floor of the Ripon office building when Freddie Moorsum pursued the younger man down the hall. His glasses were obscured on a face in distress. He walked fast after George, though he was unable to keep up with the young racer.

"You can't walk away, Cap'n! The county, the boys, they're all counting on you to hold those toffy, high society, bastards, accountable! If you walk away from this, you'll damn yourself and it'll haunt the county for generations! You know I'm right. You fool! Come back and fight damn ya! TAR YOUR HEELS COWARD!" He roared at the young man that disappeared around the corner, bumping a secretary whose files and papers went fluttering everywhere.

"Sir, I believe the Captain is quite done with this conversation …" Thomas Barrow was ever the guardian of Downton Abbey's nursery - no matter how old the former occupants had gotten. He halted any further pursuit of a clearly enraged Captain George.

"Get off me, Chump!" The pencil of a man with coiffed dark hair and his mother's face under glasses slapped the svelte and athletic butler's hand off his shoulder. He then turned to Sybbie who was watching in silent confusion. "Congratulations, and long live Morgana Le Fey, Queen of Bones!" He snarled at the girl.

"I think that's quite enough of that, Mr. Moorsum!"

Lady Mary Crawley had a dark glare of rancor as she exited the room. It looked as if she might have left the conference chambers for no other purpose but in order to go after George to continue their argument in private. But in his absence, and very outraged that someone would talk to her daughter in such a manner, Mary was cold and angry when the rest of the board exited.

"You're all fools! You are all damned fools! They'll die and all for a young girl's pretty smile and tight arse in satin!" He shouted.

"How dare …!"

"Barrow, might you escort Mr. Moorsum out!" Lord Sinderby immediately barred Lord Grantham, who had made to aggressively stride forward in defense of his cherished and beloved little girl.

But there was not a hint of remorse in the man's eyes for saying what he had. Somehow, he thought, even for the friendship of his late mother, that Lord Grantham would see things clearly. Instead, he was infatuated with his genius granddaughter, believing that she could do no wrong. He took it as a slight and a betrayal to his mother's memory.

"This way, sir!" Thomas Barrow's hands were made out of iron in his angry grip on the lapels of the Engineer.

"You fools! The whole lot of ya! You're all fools!" He raged in tears as he was dragged away by Mr. Barrow, Lord Sinderby following to make sure the accoster of his niece was truly gone.

For a long moment the raven-haired young woman watched with a frown as her competitor disappeared with the strong-arming Thomas, and a glaring Uncle Atticus with his hands behind his back. When she turned, her Donk looked incredibly rattled by the whole situation. But when she asked what had happened, Lady Mary only told her not to worry about it. But the girl saw that her mama's eyes were cast down the hallway to the sound of George Crawley's motorcycle revving angrily in the distance.

They all flinched when they heard him speed off in a terrifying lit.

Sensing the trouble that was entering the girl's mind, Lord Grantham ensured her – unconvincingly - that it was just the usual "Greek Drama" of the losing side of these local contract disputes. However, she had certainly not thought that George was one of these sore losers. But when she voiced this opinion, no one said a word for a long time. Till, Lord Grantham assured his granddaughter that George wasn't not on her side, it was only a question of something else entirely that had nothing to do with her. But she could tell that whatever George had fought with them over for the last two days had penetrated their Donk's mind. And his heir's point of argument, in particular, was entombed at the very center of his thoughts. Possibly, it even found incredible validity in the receding tide of the infighting. But Lord Grantham only smirked when catching Sybbie's tenuously inquisitive eyes.

Suddenly, a big, toothy, grin came over the young woman's pallid face when her grandfather took her in his arms and whispered the word "Congratulations" in her ear.

When she slipped back in his arms, mouth agape in shock, the old lord only nodded his head. It was just in time for Atticus and Thomas's return. The girl gave a squeal and leapt into the butler's arms, shouting to the roof tops that they did it. But Barrow only smoothed the girl's hair back and corrected that _she_ was the one who did it. To that the man got a kiss on the cheek. In fact, they all did, even those who were not her family. But when Lady Mary - half-teasingly - reminded her daughter that an excess of joy was as vulgar as an excess of tears, the girl jovially pounced on her mama. She swept her off her feet, pelting her entire face in a cascade of kisses in her arms as she rushed down the hall. Sybbie had looked like a Hammer Film monster with its bride as she shuffled awkwardly with her mama in her arms. Before turning the corner, a resign but clearly annoyed Mary made a motion for everyone to follow.

When they got back home from Ripon, both family and staff were there to throw Sybbie a surprise celebration. The girl had never been so touched, getting suddenly weepy to see her granny standing with Lucy, Marigold, Vicki, Aunt Edith, and Aunt Rose, along with all the faces of her short but happy childhood. All of them there to cheer and celebrate what she thought, at the time, would be her greatest accomplishment in her entire life. There was cake and punch, and a celebratory dinner planned with all of her and Marigold's new friends for later. Her Donk stopped the festivities, so that he might say a few words of his genius granddaughter. But all he could find in the moment, looking at her with such love, was that her mummy would be proud. Lady Sybil would be so very, very, proud of this day.

It was the only thing that Sybil Afton Branson had only ever wanted to hear all of her life.

But as the day wore on, her granny's planned party going better than possible, her and Marigold's new friends arriving by the car full, there seemed to be a nagging sorrow to the girl of the hour. All day she waited and waited … but George was nowhere to be found. She had asked if he had been invited, to which Lord Grantham admitted that he hadn't, because, they knew he would not come. George Crawley and High Society didn't mix … at all. But Sybbie, none the less, asked Anna if she'd walk down to Crawley House and demand that her brother and best friend come at once and celebrate her.

Though it was said jovially, she was once again informed that he would not come, to which the girl took her mama's tone of aristocracy. She claimed that this was her party, her big day, and that George, Marigold, and Viki were the only guests that matter. But soon she was distracted when Lady Rose took playful offense to the comment. The two gave merry chase for a moment in play, before Sybbie tossed an arm around the dear woman. But as they walked off, arm and arm, Rose gave a knowing look to Atticus, Tom, and her step-mama Lucy Branson who were standing together talking gravely and quietly of the very reason that George was absent.

Later, both Sybbie and Marigold sat in their Granny's room, watching Baxter do her hair for the dinner party. Once more the question of why George wouldn't come was brought up. Lady Grantham seemed caught by surprise, but then she replied that she was sure that she didn't know. Even when it was clear she did. In fact, Lady Grantham had known George's troubles with the situation longer than anyone, except, perhaps Atticus. But she thwarted all talk, by making the excuse that she shouldn't worry about it. If George didn't come for Mr. Bates's famed punch and Mrs. Patmore's legendary cake when it was just a family celebration, then surely, they shouldn't expect him to be there for the pomp and circumstance of a high society dinner party. Lady Grantham was sure that he just had some things to do that were pressing. But Sybbie didn't buy it for a moment. But she wouldn't press more into it when Anna informed her that the manor was being besieged by male admirers demanding Sybbie's presence.

Finally, later that night, the girl slipped away from the groups of young titled chaps that bussed down from every illustrious private school within a trains ride to Grantham Station. The girl - high on her joys as an angel harping on her cloud - walked alone in her satin evening gown. She carried nothing with her, but an old key that she kept in her cleavage. She announced herself with an enchanting voice of heavenly sounds as she sang to the twinkling stars above on her long and pondering walk.

She really did wonder if her mummy would be proud of her. If this was the peak of what she would be allowed to accomplish? She thought hard if the world would remember her ever after as the granddaughter of Lord and Lady Grantham. The beautiful playgirl heiress of "Branson and Talbot Motors". or, yet, perhaps, as the famous engineer who changed the lives of rural East Riding. Her gorgeous voice was cherished by every house she passed on her walk down the cobble street of the new district. She grinned catching the smiling gaze of curious window watchers that heard her passing the picturesque picket fences of their upper middle-class houses. Eventually, passing out of the "Cultural District" of Lady Mary's new town, through a wooded and forgotten tract, she found herself amid the desolate and scorched stone ruins of her childhood. Her heels clacked sharply in reverberation through the empty and ruined street as she removed the key from her cleavage as she approached an open gate of cold rolled iron and walked past the parked motorcycle. Her song continued softly, lovingly, in the warm and wholesome embrace of Crawley House –

‘The Last Homely House west of Downton Abbey.’

Her Gaelic love song was hummed gently as she locked the door behind her, placing the key back on the end table. She took in the soft glow of the kitchen light down the partially lit hallway and the lower steps of the staircase. The glitter of moonlight off the stained-glass strips of the frosted windows cast odd shapes on the bare walls of the hallway. Imprints of long hung paintings remained where frames were removed along with the rest of Isobel Crawley's decorations. It was the smell of cooked beef of Tex-Mex spice and the whiff of old pages of book and parchment, with just a hint of pine wood.

She couldn't help but feel that this was where she belonged.

Downton Abbey - which had been the home of her heart all the long years in the gilded cage of Buckingham Palace and Sandringham - had been defiled by her wicked deeds of her recent past. For every place that had a fond memory of childhood, there was a memory of lies, deceit, and sin. There was a Duke hitching up her skirt, pulling down her silky knickers, and bending her over a back table. His aggressive whispered voice ordering her to "take it" with every hard thrust, while everyone else was at luncheon in the conjoining room. The senior diplomat at the Berlin Embassy's controlling dowager mother whose aggressive fingers masturbated the much younger girl under evening gown. Sybbie's silk gloved hands were pinned above her head, the excited dusty matron biting the girl's collar bone, her black gloved hand covering the glamorous beauty's mouth to muffle the little gasps of pleasured pain which were earshot of a game of Bridge on the other side of the blinder. She squirmed and begged, in a hush, that a ravenous Earl and Countess - with considerable German investments - not leave love bites again. But cringed when they ripped open her blouse forcefully and began to devour the girl's satin covered breasts. An unaware Anna and Bates were only paces from were man and wife nibbled down the teenage girl's supple and taut belly in unison to taste their 'yummy girl' under her satin skirt.

But there were no such abominations or desecrations of her joy in Crawley House. The happy memories of her many days here with George and Marigold remained undisturbed within the rooms. In fact, it had become a refuge from her nightmares. These hallow halls and George's protective arms that held her through the night, were a tourniquet to a soul bleeding dry all the light and luminous after so many terrible self-inflicted wounds. The country Regency house had become a safe place from those horrible deeds that lived in her and from those which wished to repeat them. And most importantly, it was a safe place to harbor Sybbie from her own self-destructive impulses. When she was here, she could be the better part of herself. Unburdened by the things done in the name of loneliness and need for acceptance from the world of her mama, which she had so desperately wished to be a part of for so long.

It was here where the genesis of her new creation, this new chapter of her rediscovery, took place.

In truth that was what this whole thing had been about. With this new project she could move on from the horrible things she had done for a man who lied and used her shamefully. With these new converters she could be defined by something else other than what she allowed others to do to her in her family's very home. So, she could remember herself as something more than a beautiful face with money who – foolishly - threw away her dignity. There was more to her, there always had been, and this was her first step to proving everything that George had whispered in her ear as he cuddled closely the sobbing and guilt-ridden girl many nights by the fire on his lap. All of these lofty and – seemingly - impossible aspirations were born in the love and protection found in this homely country house draped in trellises of ivy and roses. And though they never discussed it really, it came as an unspoken fact that when Sybbie came of age that she would live here permanently with George.

And forever would she remain with him.

Her old Celtic song was still on her hummed breath as she glided in her elegant satin evening gown over rugs and down the quiet hall toward the study. She wondered if George would ever decorate the empty main hallway with something to replace the paintings and busts that he threw out. Everything looked so bare and skeletal without the usual decorations and paintings brought over for Matthew and Isobel Crawley in 1912. But a soft smile came over her face as she slid gently against the study's door frame.

There, alone - as usual - George sat in her Uncle Matthew's tall leather backed chair. But soon a look of worry, the same worry that she had carried with her all day, melted her happiness in the splendor of a warm country hearth. Clouds of blue smoke puffed hazily from the chair. Sybbie knew that it was only in times of great need of contemplation or thinking that he partook in the pastime of smoking. But It was neither cigarette nor cigar was his choice in these times.

The temperamental and complex clock workings of George's mind were oiled by an ancient wooden smoking pipe with strange symbols carved into it. The art of pipe smoking was often known as the ‘thinking man's past time’ as the need to operate the delicate device properly took some concentration which bled to other matters of the troubled mind. It was said that many problem's solutions could be found in a cloud of the slow burning of pipe tobacco.

Though, George never smoked tobacco.

It was some blue tinted herb of mystery to which he had several barrels of in the storeroom. Of what it was she couldn't say, other than it was not a narcotic and it was not addictive. It was something that was cultivated and farmed on the ocean floor in colder waters, harvested by a Science Pirate mentor, and smoked in the evenings. But it had a rather wonderful smell to it which Sybbie enjoyed greatly. It was something of wood baked apples in autumn. Yet, the scent of the herb carried something in it that made the smoker's mind sharper, less forgetful, and shown ways to paths unthought of in times of trouble.

But the girl knew that if George had broken out the ancient pipe, then his mind was occupied by a gravely serious matter, indeed. She watched the hazy obscurity cowl his cerulean eyes. Their color lost to the mixture of the ember stained glass reflections of the glow from the pipe and the flickering flames of the fireplace. Quietly, the tormented youth rolled the pipe over the bottom of his lip as he stared deeply into the crackling fire. Every once in a while, he let out large ponderous puffs of blue smoke from the corner of his mouth, mulling over things that were said today and many days before.

The teenage girl was sure that she had never seen anyone of their generation as incredibly serious as George was and would remain. Ever since they were young children, he had always taken the world upon his shoulders and brooded over even the smallest of failures in carrying weight that no one should at such a young age. But even then, this was a George that Sybbie didn't know very well. He had only been home for a little while now. But he seemed like a completely different person than the boy she had known when they were children before "The sacking" that took place during his departure.

Then, he had been incredibly serious and studious. He could always be found pouring over ancient maps or texts found on his many adventures with Captain Quartermain and Ms. Mina Murray in Darkest Africa and Egypt, or to the dark fathoms of the unexplored ocean depths with Captain Nemo. When he returned home, he always told the most amazing stories and had with him the most astounding artifacts and trophies from his adventures. Yet, he shared none of them with anyone but Sybbie and Marigold. And for that Sybbie loved him with all her heart.

But George was different, strange even, in the eyes of so many. He dressed differently, he talked differently, and looked differently than everyone else in their social class. The boy was an adventurer, apprentice to a Science Pirate, and acquirer of rare items of Hyborian and other, **_Eldar_** , ages of man. He spoke different languages and was incredibly rugged in dressed and style for the heir of an Earl. She remembered their Granny Violet complaining bitterly at family tea and luncheon of the boy's grown out mane of waving blonde curls and "common clothing" as if he were some clock maker's son – to this Thomas always smirked privately. Upon those same clothing he also bore strange adornments. There had been a hieroglyphic symbol stitched to the arm of his double-breasted coat and a four-pointed star of silver pinned to his lapel. Under shirt he wore a silver fob watch about his neck with an obscure symbol of Swordsmanship discipline etched masterfully upon its cover.

His attitude, however, seemed the only thing that hadn't changed over the years. George Crawley, even as a young boy, hated the gentry. He preferred the company of his fellows in the village and upon the tenant farms. He found the Aristocracy silly and tedious, and their children, doubly so. George was not raised by a nanny, did not have a governess, nor was sent to a private academy - as Mary and Violet had failed miserably to correct in all matters. What the spoiled and neglected children of future peerage found interesting and topical he found unappealing. And what George knew of the world, the many amazing things seen and experienced, the children of nobility did not seem to understand or care for. They were completely uninterested in the larger world that George knew to be out there, while the young adventurer found their vain and pompous attempts to sound worldly and "adult" incredibly ridiculous and often mocked and ridiculed them for their way of speech and attention seeking.

Thus, had the spotlight come back to Sybbie in those days. Fore, the girl's company was highly sought after by many Lords and Ladies for their children. Afterall, her greatest accomplishment to that date had been being the incredibly wealthy and beautiful heiress to the successful "Branson and Talbot Motors" as well as the niece and adopted daughter of **The** Lady Mary Crawley, "the fashion queen of London". But while she relished the high society tables, sitting by her mama, Granny, and Aunt Edith, absorbing the conversations of glamorous women at talk of fashion and gossip, she found her loyalties tested.

Fore, the love of high society, the gorgeous clothing, opulent hats, and proud smirks of her mama when the girl answered a question superbly at a garden party, was dampened greatly by her associations at home. It became suddenly clear, in private, out of her granny and Aunt Edith's earshot, that George Crawley was much discussed … and not kindly or in a heroic sense. In truth, it came to her attention that her best friend, the person she loved most in the world, was a villain. He was someone to be loathed in all the circles of high society that wished her friendship.

Her heart sank at the rancorous barbs shot at him. The prejudice so venomously pointed at the very mention of his name by dowagers. The sympathy she had so suddenly garnered just by being near, subjected, to such a "Cracked Philistine". They even went so far as to say that allowing Sybbie and Marigold to be around an incredulously terrible and toxic influence such as George Crawley seemed almost maleficence of parenting on Mr. Branson and Lady Hexham's part … not ever daring to ridicule Lady Mary Crawley. Yet, to her everlasting shame, Sybbie held her tongue. Fore, she neither partook in the rancor of the young adventurer, nor did she ever defend the boy she loved from such unimaginable hatred.

When Sybbie asked their Aunt Edith why they were so against George, Lady Hexham clicked her tongue as she drove and said that "Mary's friends" just don't like people who were different and thought for themselves. While Thomas Barrow, deeply angered by what Sybbie reported back to him, said that they're only sore, because, they want Master George's money and prestige. It was then that the butler - her oldest and dearest friend - warned his pretty Ms. Sybbie not to trust those women, not any of them. They were not her friends, and if they could, they would use Sybbie to come between her and George … and destroy him.

And that was what they did … what she allowed them to do.

Sybil Afton Branson's love for George Crawley was forever unending, yet it was tragically never unconditional. She wanted to be in both worlds. Her life would be with George as his best friend, his life partner, in all things. But she also wanted the fashion shows, the garden parties, and the glamor of court life. But she found that she could not have both. Fore, George Crawley and the British Aristocracy were two things that did not match nor could co-exist. He was too much Isobel Crawley's grandchild and the Peers were too much of themselves - some might have even said they were too full of themselves. Thus, Sybbie, unfairly, had been put on many crossroad moments in which the choice of George or High Society was placed in front of her … and back then, George had never won.

The last of such choices had come from trauma, of horror, which led her to such darkness that she still could not escape.

In the final days of George's time in England, before being driven to America and Grandmamma so far away for many long years, she was given an ultimatum. Of the things done in Brancaster Castle in that final month to a young girl by Mirada Pelham, her Uncle Bertie's mother, was unquestionably evil. Yet, she and Marigold had been saved by George who ended one woman's reign of terror over two young girls one terrible night. But his heroism in that darkest hour would forever haunt Sybbie for near a decade. It was in the aftermath of George's rescue of Marigold from being bathed in a boiling vat of bleach by a crazed woman trying to cover up what the little girl saw her doing while she had Sybbie on the bed. George and Marigold had told all of what happened, but no one believed them. Marigold, beautiful beyond account, but timid and gentle, believed to be easily led by one she loved so deeply. Then, there was George Crawley, a long and bitter foe of Mirada Pelham, who just so happened to find a 'convenient' excuse to push an old woman into a boiling bathtub of bleach.

Those same people that Thomas had warned his Ms. Sybbie about, saw their chance and took it.

Some days before the massacre, on excuse of buying her a new frock, her mama and Princess Mary had taken her to Buckingham Palace. There, over tea and the most delicious scones she ever had, the Queen and several members of court questioned her of the incident in Brancaster. The girl, intimidated by the presence of queen and princesses, told it all and told it true. But it was then that both The Prince of Wales and the courtiers expressed disappointment that she would lie. Horrified at the prospect, Sybbie refuted that she lied, saying that George had saved their lives. But they continued to slander the young girl, mortified that she would tell such scandalous and 'perverted' falsehoods … and in the presence of the Queen, no less! Her mama tried to intervein, Princess Mary grew cross and proclaimed that she did not bring Lady Mary and Ms. Sybil for this. But both the girl's mama and the Princess were immediately dismissed.

Eventually, the crying young girl was comforted by the King Emperor who stepped in. He chastised the courtiers and his son for such inhumane treatment of such a young beauty. He sent them all away and sat Sybbie down on his knee. There, after some grandfatherly words and grand promises, he sweetly set the young girl's mind at ease. But there as they ate scones alone, he told her the truth of the matter and sternly.

George's testimony, of Sybbie's torments and molestation, the attempted murder of Marigold, it all hinged on one broken and traumatized young girl's word. If she corroborated all of what George and Marigold had said, if she justified George's valiant actions that night, it would be the end of her dreams. No one would want her anymore. All the society teas, glamorous fashion shows, and summer garden parties would be gone. She would never see her mama smirk proudly of a well-spoken answer. She would not sit at a senior table of peerage next to her granny or attend an Eton or Harrow athletic tourney with her Aunt Edith - to tie her favor onto such handsome and dashing young men. If they found out, if it got out, what Mirada Pelham had done to her, what Sybbie allowed her to do, even if she didn't want it to happen. No one would want her. Then, she would join George as the preferred – no – 'fashionable' target of hatred in the aristocracy. So it was that when a young girl was asked of what happened one last time … to her everlasting shame …

She lied.

In confession with all the royal court present, she said that George and Marigold did not tell the truth about what happened at Brancaster. Sybbie exclaimed that she had not been molested by Mirada Pelham, and that Marigold's life was not in danger for witnessing the rape - she was merely spanked for wandering the castle after her bedtime. Agreeing that she had told it all and told it true, the girl was praised emphatically by all. They called her Ms. Sybil "The Honest". Showing such courage and boldness in her truth. But the only one not smiling, and greatly troubled, was Lady Mary who looked quite affright as Sybbie was shakily appreciative of the lavish attention and wide praise by the most important peers of the land.

Fore she did not know that the arrest warrant for George Crawley, 38th Lord of Downton, was being written by Royal Decree on basis of Ms. Sybil Afton Branson's very testimony.

Now, even walking down to Crawley House she saw the destruction that followed her one wicked action eight years prior. They call it "The Old District" now … but people on "New Mainstreet" on the other side of the Town call it "The Ruins". Fore, the old village of Downton, it's medieval stone buildings and architecture that lined a cobble stone street were now burnt out husks, ransacked, abandoned. Business and shops as old as Lord Grantham, older perhaps, were looted and burned. On rainy nights Sybbie could hear the winching cries of Bakewell's damaged and scorched sign from George's room as she lay in his arms as they slept. The many storefront windows were now brittle and riddled with bullet holes. At the center of the old village the war memorial was chipped and damaged by gunfire from firefights within the main square. While the old church - host to many weddings of great love and funerals of great parting - was half demolished, sacked, its contents and items left strewn in the snares of vines and ivy from the overgrown and forgotten graveyard.

In the aftermath of the slaughter, as the Lord's Convention was convened in order for the Winsor's to answer for their crimes, Ms. Sybil's testimony was bandied about much. Prince Edward – of whom most thought liable to hang for such grievous butchery - argued strongly that George Crawley was a criminal and pirate who knowingly attempted to murder a moral and just woman of gentle birth. That precious and honest Ms. Branson's faithful words and sworn testimony was evidence of the boy's crimes and that of his men which stood in the way of His Majesty's Justice! Yet, many Lords still demanded that Ms. Sybil Branson be brought forth to be questioned further on the matter. But, in the end, no documents of summons were ever sent to Grantham House in London.

Thus, after much arguing, death threats, and challenges of duels, The Lord's Convention was in majority, though not unanimous. They had upheld the Crown's case against George Crawley and sanctioned the use of deadly force against the Grantham County Regiment, Militia Levies, and even citizenry itself as enemies to the Crown in uprising on behalf of a rebel and a traitor. Though, it is so here noted that much of these findings were under protest and, in truth, seen as inconclusive by most of the Lords. And it is said that it was a goodly Christmas for a great deal of otherwise doubtful Lords who found their coffers filled and their tables graced with the pick of heiresses and royal daughters. Indeed, in the aftermath, both Marquesses of Hexham and Flintshire resigned their position in the House in disgust, as did Lord Branksome in protest. While many Scottish Lairds declared it a travesty of Justice and called for reforms in the monarchy.

But it was therefore, and hereafter proclaimed, that young George Crawley was designated outlaw to the Crown. Yet – and much to the grudge of the Prince and his friends – the convention also voted that George would be allowed to retain his title and inheritance, both Grantham and the ruins of a Cornish mine and estates - the worthless ancestral holdings of Reginald and Matthew Crawley. And to this, some Lords, invested in the future fortune and beauty of young Ms. Branson as Downton Abbey's heiress, were heard saying that it would be but a minor defeat now that the Lord of Downton's life was declared forfeit. The Imperium ever filled with much diversity of bounty hunters and cut-throats of exceeding skill and greed.

But from then, and every day since, Sybbie Branson was met coldly on the Downton street by survivors of that night of horror. She had never been beloved like George by the common people of the county. Ms. Sybbie, unlike the young master, was haughty, spoiled, and often unkind to those in village and tenancy. She was not rude, of that one could always stake. But she walked on air, many feet above everyone else. Of the instinct of Tom Branson to take his daughter elsewhere in young fatherhood, this was chiefest of reason above all. Fore being raised in Downton Abbey, in the gentility of such opulence and grandeur, had given a young girl entitlement rather than privilege. And it was often, raised by Ladies Mary and Cora, that the girl looked down her perfect nose on all that did not live the life she did.

And her priss like behavior was only checked by George, who did not tolerate such haughty and ignorant attitudes about or in the presence of his friends and tenants. And the beautiful and spoiled heiress learned much curtesy to those less fortunate from the back of the boy's hand and the strike of his fist at such blatant prejudice. Their rows were sometimes legendary and painfully public for the House of Grantham, as the two children insulted, slapped, and grappled at the indignity of words spoken by the young porcelain dolly with silk ribbon in her luxurious raven drop curls.

And it was said by many grieving mothers and wives that the Crawleys of Downton Abbey had betrayed their men and young Captain George to the foe. That their absence from the field and their feasting of Prince Edward in London during the battle was proof enough. Robert had been indignant, claiming that he and Lady Grantham were there to sign peace with the Royal Family, that they knew not that it had been a trap to ambush George and their men. But his pleas to be heard fell on hardened hearts and they turned away from him and gave no more heed to his words ever afterward. Of this, grieved deeply to the very heart, Robert relinquished his management of the county to Mary, in full. Adding to much sorrow was the prospect that George was now gone, on the run, hunted by royal agents … but to where he had gone no one knew. Or yet, if Lord and Lady Grantham knew, they told not a soul.

In that time young Sybbie Branson was sorrowful, fore she bore much of the blame in private, while denying any of it in public. The killing and mayhem that destroyed her childhood home had been enabled by the very lies she had told. And she sobbed violently and begged repentance of what she had done for many years in the still of a midnight.

In the days that followed there was endless arguing and bitter fighting between her family, especially between her mama and Aunt Edith. But there were no referees, fore Lady Grantham had slipped out hours after they heard of what happened to the village, receiving an appointment from Thomas and his _close_ _friend_ Mr. Ellis about something rather important. Afterward, no one knew where her granny had gone for a long time, accompanying the two men to some errand of secrecy. Then, over the subsequent days, speaking to no one but Thomas, Lady Cora was in and out of Grantham House. Till one morning, Sybbie, coming down the stairs, ran into her granny who looked like she had been crying. Then, she feared the worst.

For a week, the lovely young thing couldn't sleep, barely ate, did not know what to do. George was missing, he was not found among the dead of the county or with his fallen men at Downton Abbey. They did not know if he had been taken by the enemy or murdered somewhere out of the way and buried deep where no one could find him. And the lovely young girl had believed, truly, that this was all her fault … if she had only been brave and held to the truth.

Her last interaction with George had been the final time that any of them had seen him. The last desperate intervention by all of their family, not just their aunts and uncles, Donk and Granny, or their mama. Even Granny Violet, Lucy, and Lady Bagshaw had attended to beg George to sign the Royal decree that would have him admit guilt of attempted murder, agree to never speak of it again, but leave him without punishment. But George refused, under any scrutiny or pain of death … he was no liar! Then, in frustration and fear for him – though she would deny it - Lady Mary lost all sanctity and reason and put to her son, her only son, cruel and terrible words. Of these things spoken were grievous evils that no mother should say to her child, not ever. But still, George would not yield, doubling down in sorrow and pain to hear such things from his own mother's lips.

But as he left, shaking hands with some of the staff who were proud of his stand for what was right, he caught Sybbie's eye as she stood at the Grand Staircase in the Great Hall of Downton Abbey. He spoke no words to her, refused to give her anything, he only glared hatefully at the beautiful young girl with a silk bow in her long glossy ringlets. He had risked his life that night, he had come through a violent storm, fought footmen and Brancaster's Sergeant-At-Arms, all just to get to the girls he loved. The boy had been injured in the fight with Mirada, but he did not let up, not once, to rescue Marigold and Sybbie from her violent madness … And Sybbie had betrayed him when it mattered most.

The lies of Sybbie coupled with Mary's evil words had broken something in George, something that could never be recovered. With all of the girl's heart she wished to go to him, to sob and take him in her arms and apologize. But she hadn't, she had only stood there, glaring back, as if he was exactly what High Society said he had been.

But when she heard of the wanton destruction of her home, of the many dead, and George missing, she cried her cerulean eyes red every night into her mama's chest. Lady Mary said nothing, her amber eyes cold and devastated in quiet torment of the last words she had ever said to her son. But now as they all gathered around a tear streaked Lady Grantham, no one could bear the silent moments of anticipation in her emotional pause.

" _He's safe … and he's gone. Maybe forever."_

It was all that Cora Crawley could bring herself to say as she walked away.

It was these incidents, along with the long nights weeping into her mama's chest, holding Marigold so close through the day, and the bitter winter entrammeling their spirit, that she welcomed the sudden change. Fore on the afternoon of a bleak mid-winter's day she was informed that along with her mama, granny, and Aunt Edith, Sybbie would be staying at Buckingham Palace. Then, the misery of her heart, bereft of George, was lightened at such an honor. Yet, she couldn't understand why her daddy was so broken up about it, why he cried when they were alone, or why he held her so tightly. She always laughed, kissing his cheek, saying that it was only for a few weeks, and then, she would be back. But she was frightened by her daddy's expression, as he nodded in agreement, but his eyes … his heart, spoke of something else, something he dare not tell her.

And looking back, on that final day, she still felt heart sick to think of such a spoiled tantrum she had thrown. She had wanted nothing more than to go to Buckingham Palace early, to see her room, to see everything. In her fitful annoyance she haughtily scorned her daddy's "childishness" of wanting just one more walk around the park with her hand in his. Nor would Sybbie ever forgive herself for forcing him to give up his want. And that first ride to the gilded gates would be the last in which she would ever be happy to see that place again. Fore, amidst the girlish fantasy of being a Princess and living in a shining palace, the atmosphere was choked with dark fumes.

Almost immediately upon their arrival they were told of a the terrible "Battle of the Horn".

[ _("Ghost Riders in the Sky" - Johnny Cash)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mynzbmrtp9I)

Enraged and obsessed, Prince Edward, against all orders and commands, had commandeered a mighty Battleship from the Royal fleet. He could not leave be the haunting torment of knowing that a terrible wounded George Crawley had escaped the Royal nets and - with the help of Lady Grantham - had been borne away by the Sikh Science Pirate. Being a Navy man, himself, the Prince rashly flew to Australia, and from Perth he took the might and pride of the Pacific Fleet and her full complement. Thus, for months, began the great pursuit of the Nautilus.

It was known by many to be 'A Terror from the World of Tomorrow." It's captain, a known mad man of whom many treaties and compromises had been made to ensure the safety of the Royal Navy for near a century. Yet, the Prince of Wales jeopardized all of it for a vendetta against one young boy, The mad man's apprentice. The cables from the Admiralty were hot with messages demanding that the warship be returned immediately. But they were discarded, as the Prince was ranking still over even the high command.

And upon the very day that the women of the House of Grantham took the place of Lady Bagshaw, the Prince's doggedness had earned him an appointment with fate. Off the Horn of South America, the mighty Imperial warship had been befouled by the Nautilus that lay in wait for her. The battle was long and fierce, stretching days of fighting, wheeling, and hunting. Ever was the Battleship and the Prince the aggressor, and many thought it did him credit, but if they had only known that they were being lured into a trap.

Caught between a frozen reef and a horizon fielded by icebergs, the British warship's guns blazed hails of shells into the forest of sighing ice that creaked and cracked. Meanwhile, sliding silently through avalanches, the Nautilus navigated while under heavy fire through the field till the trapped prince was in their sights. Then, helmed into position by the Sikh Captain and the last torpedo aimed by a young and newly outlawed apprentice, they hit the apex of the bow of the warship right on the waterline. It would be long remembered by both sides as a "one in a thousand" shot. Then, in madness, seeing his enemy foundering, Captain Nemo ordered that they advance. With a cruel cry of fury, he ran out the great diamond tipped harpooning ram at the front of the Nautilus. It was then, that the clockwork submarine tore a deep gash through the warship's iron plating like a can opener. Thus, it was, in the darkness, many miles from land, that the pride of the British Navy and her full complement sank into icy waters some fifty miles from the South Pole.

Buckingham Palace was in mourning … not for their prince, but for the reputation of the Royal House that was to be damaged even further. They had lost the heir to the throne, their most vaulted warship, and a thousand sailors. Furthermore, the entire British Navy was now under threat with the treaty broken with Nemo. There would be no stopping the mad captain of the Nautilus from hunting their vessels, burning their bases at anchor. And the last people that any Royal member wanted to see was Ladies Cora, Mary, and Edith.

Sybbie spent the balance of that evening sitting with Marigold as well as the interim Prince of Wale's young daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. Outside her door she heard courtiers hissing rancorously and enraged behind clenched teeth. _"BY GOD, SIR! what in the Devil's name is it going to take to KILL THAT FILTHY LITTLE HALF-BREED?!"_ This put her ill at ease, and it was then that she began to realize that she was in the wrong place. But still she held to hope that things would get better.

But they only got worse.

Fore it was in the beginning of spring, after all search parties for Prince Edward went astray, there came a crate that was delivered in the throne room. It was during the coming out ceremony of many young debutants, the court assembled, that it was finally noticed. By some ill mood, or by chance a mistake of some jolly surprise, the crate was opened … and it would ever be the smell that everyone would remember the most.

In screams of horror and shock, there came rolling heads, heads, heads, and heads. They were British heads, Australian Heads, and Kiwi heads. Some still had their officer's caps on as they rolled onto the red and gold plush carpets. They were the full accompaniment of the officers of the sunken British warship, their heads decapitated, stuffed in a crate, and somehow delivered unseen to a Royal Ceremony. There in the Captain's mouth was a simple folded note with large emblazoned "N" of black with gold outlining. The King was furious and ordered them away, but it was his advisors' grim duty to inform his majesty that they must be checked … in case Prince Edward was amongst them. But he wasn't.

And it was well then made known that Nemo did such a thing in order to rub the invaders and conquerors of his kingdom's nose in their failures. But also, a message that, though the Royal House's reach was indeed long in their vast Empire, at any moment, Nemo, Lord of the Seven Seas, could reach even the King Emperor in his vast golden court.

Thus, it was that the Grantham County Massacre had been repaid in blood, and ever would such retribution be shadowed in the minds of the Royal Family, even till this day.

But also is it so here marked that from these violent delights and horrific spectacles, some believed that George Crawley took overly much. And that his brutality toward his enemies and his darkly brooding nature was learned at the feet of Captain Nemo - the closest thing that some would say the young boy had to a father. Often was it remarked upon hearing tales of the Halifax Estate and his hateful dealings with his family's enemies that Nemo's dark madness touched his heart.

But of the fate of Prince Edward, there was only one who could gainsay these accusations against George Crawley. Fore it is said that long and bitter did George argue with the dark ravings of Captain Nemo at the fate of their prisoners. The boy held his tongue in hate at the repeated and gruesome tormenting of Prince Edward when he fell into their hands. But he would not hold with the execution of captives, nor the hewing of their dead bodies. They were Englishmen, countrymen, and they did their duty as a soldier is bid, even if commanded by a cruel prince.

But having been returned the necklace of his wife from the Queen's treasure room by George's own hand, Nemo was taken again by the ghosts of his past. Then was the murder of his wife and daughters by the Hanoverians' mercenaries ever upon his mind, like a flaring of an old poisoning to a grim wound. And from such came a torrent of a deep and black rage of tyrannical madness that took him. Fiercely and frighteningly did he then deal with all the prisoners evilly. He ordered them massacred, one by one, forcing the Prince to watch each of his men put to death cruelly. But at the end, mostly mad and unmanned himself, the prince and the last of his crew's lives were defended.

Taking his Sikh saber in hand, the boy challenged his mentor to a duel. With the rest of their company looking upon their youngest member in wonder and amazement, the youth proclaimed that he would gladly sell his life to stop such evil work and barbarous butchery. But in his devilish throes, the dark captain denounced his apprentice as traitor, drawing his own bejeweled Rajput against him. Then, upon the very bridge of the clockwork wonder did George Crawley and Captain Nemo cross blades over the lives of their enemies.

But the outcome of that duel does not come into this tale.

However, in the late spring of that year, Sybbie was awoken to breakfast by Anna Bates. With her lady's maid came the news that Prince Edward had been found. Over toast with Princess Elizabeth and Marigold, they heard from the royal governesses that the heir had been found in the Caribbean, reeking, naked, and half mad with what they say was the heat. He was companioned with a dozen survivors, and of these few were all that was left of a crew of thousands. But none of them would speak of their imprisonment or the cause of their release. The terror and horror of what they had witnessed in the dungeons of the Mad Science Pirate was too near and would remain so for the rest of their wretched and sorrowed lives. Nor ever again would they take to the sea, afeared of what they knew lay in its depths.

But as spring had ended, the girl began to miss home, miss her daddy. Often did she ask her mama and granny if he might be allowed to come at least lunch with them. But always did Lady Mary assure her girl that he was much too busy to drive all the way up to London just for a mere thirty minutes of eating. But when Sybbie proclaimed that he would do such a thing for her, Lady Mary simply told her girl that the answer must be no. Then, teary eyed and frustrated she would run away, begrudging the annoyed sigh her mama let out in her dramatic wake. There, in her room, she sobbed and beat at her pillow. George was gone, Marigold only visited now that her Uncle Bertie had quit the House of Lords. And she hadn't seen her daddy or Donk for months. Downton Abbey had been sacked and the village destroyed. She had been living in London at her grandparents' house since November. The girl felt that she had no home anymore, no friends, and no mobility.

All she wanted to do was see her daddy!

But it was in a throe of another spoiled tantrum, one which the Royal Governess could not contain, that Lady Mary was finally summoned from the Queen's tea. There, bitterly incredulous, never one for motherhood, Lady Mary snapped at Sybbie. It was then that she revealed to her the truth of the matter in a show of unguardedness. They were not guests of the King Emperor and the Queen. The Royal Family and their political allies believed that if they "hosted" those whom George loved most that he might attempt to rescue them … and then they'd trap him.

Lady Mary explained to her daughter that she, Sybbie, and her granny were hostages, prisoners in the most gilded of all cages in the world. They could not leave, nor have any visitors that were not approved by the Royal household. And, forgetting recent history of his heroics in saving the king's life, and rather in the interest of wanting to reshape and mold a young heiress's upbringing, Tom Branson was barred from seeing or writing to his daughter. These truths, spoken harshly by a frightened and unsure Mary, nearly unmade Sybbie that night.

Cora held her tightly as she begged and pleaded to see her daddy, her donk. She wanted to leave this place, leave England, to be with George, like it's supposed to be. But her captors would never grant such a wish. All Sybbie was allowed was her lessons in education as well as indoctrination of royal and high societal etiquette. Her only comfort were the long visits from Marigold who came every weekend and wrote to Sybbie every day, even when sharing the same royal bed chamber. But her treats were the secret letters from her daddy that, at times, Princess Mary would smuggle inside to her. Of those letters written with much longing and love that a father had for a daughter, Sybbie saved and cherished.

But of news of George, the Grantham Ladies were officially forbidden from hearing. Their only source of information came from Edith. The Marchioness, through Laura Edmunds, her friend and Editor, corresponded regularly with Martha Levinson, of whom had lately taken charge of the boy. She also had letters from their adopted sister Lady Rose, who was known to be quite often in George's company along with Madeline Allsopp. Then, for a while, Sybbie's heart was at peace. And often could she be found with a New York newspaper, learning all there was to know about its happenings and wondering if George had been a part of them.

But the hardest day came some years later. Realizing that George was not coming to save his granny, mama, and Sybbie, the Royal Household began to make economies. "The Great Depression" had come on strongly. But more to the point, there was word that the Grantham Holdings were failing.

[ _("Will ye No Come Back Again" - Craig Duncan)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSRiLJVYdhU)

The Estate, for some time now, had been blacklisted by the Crown. The goods sold by the once agricultural powerhouse was barred from many markets and its survival leaned heavily on selling cheap to the Weimar German Republic for mostly worthless money. Also, the productivity was greatly harmed by the sudden and cruel depopulation of Grantham County, in which many of the farmers and tenants had been killed during the assault on Downton while defending their homes and their young Lord.

The courtier schemers - ever in chasing the ennoblement of Sybbie for their own gains at her future wedding - were determined to starve the widows and children of Grantham County till they surrendered the location of the Lord of Downton. For years The Crown offered a reward of 50,000 pounds - a sum beyond the wildest dreams of any poor and starving farmer's widow - for the aid in capturing George "The Comet" Crawley. But no one, even after the cruelties of rape, theft, and murder of their loved ones, **_no one_** , would betray their Captain.

Thus, with Sybbie taken, Lady Mary and his wife entrapped in Buckingham Palace as "Companions" of the queen. Lord Grantham was left to do his best under lonely circumstances of rebuilding and helping his tenants survive the winter. Food became scarce, even at Downton Abbey, and comfort even less with their loved ones taken from them. Yet, Robert, Edith, Bertie, and Tom would not yield George, ask for the return of their loved ones from "Royal Obligation", nor asked mercy for themselves.

Eventually, after some years, at the long begging of Princess Mary, the blacklisting was removed. Then, atop that mercy, The Crown also began gifting annual capital to the Grantham Estate. One might have thought it restitution for the prince's crimes of the past, especially at Edith's reports of the King and Queen's growing fondness for Sybbie and Marigold. But Tom nor Lord Grantham was fooled. They knew that as Sybbie got older, closer to coming of age, that Prince Edward could not sell her with a broken-down estate and torn village.

Thus, Lady Mary was the first to be released from "Royal Obligation". And that was a great sorrow to Sybbie. Fore, though she was robbed of Daddy and Donk. She still had her mama, who she slept with every night, who she dined with when not obligated by the Queen or away to some ball or dinner party in another Great House of Aristocracy. There was still a sense of normalcy in her life, she still had a mama of whom she could rely upon. But now that was taken away from her too. And she remembered how she cried, clutching to her tightly, and even Lady Mary shed tears as she chastised her girl. But she was told to be strong and that her granny would look after her.

To the heartbreaking scene, it was the first cracking of the cold veneer of the old King and Queen's hearts. Then, from that day, they began seeing Sybbie less as a hostage of advantage, a prize trophy taken from the very heart of their young foe Lord Downton. And instead saw her more as a daughter day by day. And as her loveliness blossomed in the morning tide of her youth, the more they were beguiled by her everyday charm. It soon delighted the King and Queen that Sybbie call them Mother and Father, as they soon began to call her daughter. Then, somewhere, over the years, they had forgotten that Sybbie was a hostage at all and the girl received every honor that an Imperial Princess would have. And though the royal princes grudged this secretly, Princess Mary alone held to the girl dearly and proclaimed Sybbie 'sister' till her dying day.

But in those same years, at the return of Mary, there was a renewal of spirt at Downton. Much heart was taken at the reunion of Mary, Tom, and Edith who once more dwelt under the same roof again. And to sooth the winter of Lord Grantham who withered without his beloved wife, the three siblings looked to restore Downton back to the top. Yet, rather than rebuild what was destroyed, Lady Mary Crawley, inspired by years in the Royal Court, instead built new districts and left the old village of her youth and childhood to ruin. Fore, though it was incredibly sentimental a place to Ladies Mary and Edith, there was a lack of population now to inhabit the old village.

In the later years of her reign, there was a boom of house buying in her new districts. A newer, swankier, commuter class began to populate the now 'small town'. Under Lady Mary, Downton became a tourist fantasy of the most romantic depiction of an English Countryside town. It was a place that commuters from the cities would invite their friends over for a weekend so they might traverse the picturesque settings and grandeur of the beautiful romantism of English Culture by night. Thus, more and more, with the Crown's capital, did she build houses, and sold them to the upper middle-class pavement dwellers. Slowly, she gentrified in the name of progress, and her plans for the glorious future rolled over all that was.

Yet, clouded by ambition, Lady Mary borrowed exorbitant amounts of money to build this 'New Downton' and paid it off by a steeper and steeper tax burden on the tenancies. All in a bid to control a monopoly on the agriculture of the county through the Estate. This alone had she believed would be able to keep up with the financial demands of her dream "Town and Country" hybrid of nostalgia and metropolitan swank that she built.

But as the years melted one to the other, and Downton became more and more successful as a tourist trap, the store of goodwill drained in Lady Mary's heart. The taxes she demanded could only be paid by her new denizens, while the widows and children of Downton's now long fallen defenders could only, barely, scrape by. Petitions by the rural members of the county to Lord Grantham fell on deaf ears when he brought them to his daughter's attention. With her baby Caroline dead, her eldest girl a captive of the Royal Family, and her only boy's existence but mere rumors and strange stories from far off lands, Mary closed herself off from the world. Of her growing tyrannical nature against these so-called 'Inept Rustics', Lord Grantham called it grief and Tom Branson called it Depression. But Lady Hexham, in utter disgust, called it a sickness of the mind when she once more left Downton for London, refusing to be party to Mary's cruel schemes.

In growing tension and despair, there came a secret greeting uttered in pubs and town meeting places between these so called 'rustics', sometimes in the hearing of Mary herself

" _Here's to the Earl, sir! If you catch what I mean, sir ..."_

At the beginning of her tyrannical clutch upon Grantham County there came an article in several London papers. Written by an anonymous author, they called foul Mary's claim to Matthew Crawley's shares of the Grantham Estate. The author, then, so claimed, on good authority, that Mr. Crawley's Last Will and Testament had been forged by the Late Dowager Countess of Grantham. At the end of the article, the author proclaimed that George Crawley, 38th Lord of Downton, was the rightful master of the estate and that Mary was nothing more than an envious usurper and royalist puppet.

At first, despite the scoffing, Lady Mary went to make sure that the record of Matthew's last note was still there … but it wasn't. It was then that she angrily and almost violently confronted Edith at her own magazine, in front of her employees. Viciously, she accused her of stealing Matthew's last written words in order to spite her on behalf of George. But when Edith savagely and angrily rebuffed her sister, calling for security to throw her out, Mary turned her anger on Thomas.

Knowing of the butler's past as a schemer of wicked plots, married to his "unnatural" attachment to the children - George chief among them - it seemed to her that Thomas was at play here. But the man nearly turned in his notice at the accusations that stung harder in the Grantham household than any other. But Lord Grantham did not accept it. In turn he vigorously defended him against Mary's 'outrageous' insult. Tom had done his best to comfort Mary, saying it was just a rumor. But at the height of her power, Lady Mary Crawley heard the distant rumble of a storm of reckoning brewing across the sea. But rather than repent and join it in hope, she hardened her heart against it and tightened her iron grip in despair and pride.

When Sybbie Branson was released back home, she found her beloved childhood town changed. The new Downton seemed a marvel. It had become a romantic and idealized gem that captured the heart of everything of the English Countryside. It seemed like a tour through the very best of Jane Austen's novels but with the most modern of comforts. Indeed, there was some sort of indescribable sense of whimsical wonder and magic in the air on the high streets of the new districts. On a Friday night, walking among the crowds, one could not help but feel young and gay. Fore, Lady Mary, Tom Branson, and Lord Grantham had turned a dying place, trapped in a lost time, into a haven for the up and coming of a new upper middle class. There were bakeries, tea shops, coffee houses, and restaurants. Festivals that brought crowds that looked into antique shop's storefronts and took hayrides to pumpkin patches. The magic of "Downton Town" alight at Christmas was a treat worth a most coveted postcard.

And yet, amongst this rich rebirth, painted upon the very Estate Office's front was **"Wha'll Be Earl but Georgie?"** in defiance and nose thumbing. The old song _"Will Ye No' Come Back Again"_ was sung in mass by the tenants, farmers, and working and lower middle-class people of the old county when Mary gave keynote speeches at festivals. But Sybbie was even more shocked that her mama had them all violently rounded up and imprisoned for a week.

Then, walking through the old village, Sybbie could hear the discontented talk echoing hollowly through the abandoned stone ruins from the "Grantham Arms". There, she heard the raising of toasts to the health of the Earl of Grantham … the real one. Then, with gusto in their cups, they all, men and women, would sing old rebel songs from Irish Risings and Jacobite Rebellions. But instead of Charles Edward Stuart, they sang of George Crawley. And in place of the Georgian Kings, Lady Mary and Prince Edward were substituted in.

It was then that Sybbie realized that her mama had built her picturesque swanky resort town on powder keg foundations that were just waiting to be lit.

While getting dressed for bed, Sybbie, trying to tactfully avoid the subject, had only off handedly asked if her mama had heard any news of George lately. But with a cold fury, Lady Mary strictly requested that her daughter not say 'his' name in her presence. Then, realizing that she spoke too harshly, her mama took her little girl in her arms, kissing her cheek. With a sigh, she exclaimed that she couldn't wait for Sybbie to meet the new man in Mary's life. Being coy about the surprise, _she asked if Sybbie liked movies_.

The next morning, Sybbie enquired from Thomas just what had happened between George and their mama in her absence. From her own recollection, Lady Mary had been inconsolable about the fate of her boy. But with some bitterness the faithful butler informed his Ms. Sybbie that since the article came out all those years ago, the promise of George's return to Downton had become rather a rallying cry for the downtrodden and oppressed of the county. And that Her Ladyship had stopped praying for her son's return some time ago and, instead, began to dread it, maybe even stop it from ever happening. Fore if George returns there was most certainly to be a civil war between mother and son. If all the things that had been heard of young George Crawley were to be believed, the atrocities committed against the people of the county by Mary would not sit well with him. _"Or I don't know our boy …"_ Thomas said with pride _._

But when asked if he thought their mama would give him a fight, the butler warned that Lady Mary was not the same woman that had so ably won the heart and soul of Matthew Crawley. She was, after all, the one who claimed that she would rather die a thousand cruel deaths than surrender her grandmother's house to that 'violent, spiteful, and vengeful, little animal'. To this prospect, Sybbie became greatly afraid, because of what she knew of the Royal Court she just left.

Before being set free, the regal beauty of silk and jewels was given permission of a favor. The old king, looking with paternal pride and sorrow upon the once young girl that had grown by his very eyes into a lovely rose abloom, promised that she might have anything she desired from him and his house. And it was then, with the favor of a King Emperor of a vast Imperium, that the girl asked, begged upon her knees at his side, for the one thing she wished above all else in all her years as his and the queen's ward.

But then, head upon Thomas's shoulder as he held her against him in private, a tear fell at what she might have wrought with such a heartfelt desire of love's purity.

Since that day and for eight years, George had been at New York, Cincinnati, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Harper's Ferry, Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Gatlinburg, Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis, Tupelo, Starkville, Shreveport, New Orleans, Nacogdoches, Fort Worth, Waco, Austin, Fredericksburg, Kerrville, San Antonio, Mission, Donna, Edinburg, Weslaco, San Angelo, Odessa, Midland, Laredo, El Paso, Santa Fe … and many places in Mexico that she couldn't pronounce. But whether it was any of those cities or so many smaller towns unaccounted, it did not matter, because Sybbie had thought of nothing else for so long. But at the prospect of seeing him again she was ruled chiefly by a shame, anger, and guilt that kept her from even writing to him when their Aunt Edith and Marigold went on expeditions to America over the years when they learned he was in trouble.

She forever carried with her that final look he had given her before it all went down, the hatred, the betrayal, and the realization that the length of his enduring love was not shared. Instead, she threw herself into the mires of Court life which embraced her as a hero for helping to get rid of the troublesome 'half-breed'. And with shame and worthlessness for all her traumas and self-loathing of her childhood nightmares, she offered herself up to be molded by their prejudices and superficialities.

Thus, it was, for eight long years, Sybbie Branson was the most accomplished, most beloved, most accursed, and wicked debutante London had ever seen. The girl's cruelty and malice toward her peers was unrivaled. With the old King and Queen's protection, she mocked, teased, and tormented scores of young society girls of who ever lived in fear of Sybil Branson's very gaze across the royal board. She was vapid, self-centered, mean, and unkind. In her despair, she became a monster who ruined lives without a blink, doing cruel things just on a whim of a bet made by her hangers on and cronies.

She was beautiful in presence, haunting as the glimmer of starlight upon the surface of a cool clean lake, and terrible beyond reproach. Yet, ever the more she hardened her heart as she became beloved by the inner circles of the Royal Family. But in truth, and well hidden, was her broken heart and gregarious longing for George in the privacy of her opulent bedroom where she unguarded herself in the presence of Marigold and her granny. It wasn't in her to ever bear her fangs to the last of her family left to her in those years of loneliness. And with love and deep attachment did she hold Lady Grantham who had long been released of "Royal Obligation" and yet stayed still, sacrificing years of a happy marriage, determine to never abandon her 'baby girl'. But still, even the tale – the many terrible tales – of their girl's wickedness in the Royal Court had reached even Downton Abbey afar.

But she could not gainsay her doom, which was ever shared with George's.

Fore in that final year there had become a breaking point. Lady Mary had but once more raised the rents and the tax on the county to a level that was, to many, even of those who could pay it, cruel. In her stern coldness, disconnected from the lives of the tenants and independent farmers, her goodwill ran out. Thus, was her state of mind and mood always put upon and exasperated at the not understanding of why so many had to complain. Did they not know that there was a "slump"? Surely with the harvests, they could pay. But of this attitude, even Sybbie knew that what a shop keeper and Tea House made, was not what a Tenant Farmer could make from a megger crop.

Fore, Lady Mary over the years, and when they were quite vulnerable, had confiscated much land from the farms, knowingly cutting the tenant's harvest, some by half. It was insidious practice and abuse of power, but at the time, Mary had long argued with Tom and Edith of the need to keep Downton going in the early days of her return. And it had been Lady Mary Crawley who proclaimed that Downton Abbey was the beating heart of the community, not "Long Tree Farm". Yet, the awful truth of the matter, which was not known by many, was that Lady Mary's building schemes had put the entire Estate in debt, a debt that was oppressive to the future.

But to Mary's predicament came a supposed savior. Her fiancé, Roger Sinclair, had offered his bride-to-be a chance of a lifetime. He knew some very excited investors; German business heads, that would be interested in keeping the estate afloat by opening new doors to "Branson & Talbot" as a manufacturer and top dollar prices for an export of Estate's crops to German interests … "Around the World".

But to her proposed plan, there was a near riot when the county heard wind of the scheme for 'German' investors giving money to the Grantham Estate and Motor Company. It was a sentiment that was shared by Robert, who had not forgotten the murder of Marigold's father and of who had committed it - while it seemed to him that it was obvious that his eldest daughter had. Mary argued with her Papa that a "German Military Contract" would save Downton for generations if they opened up offices in Berlin and Munich. Robert would not hear it, nor use Downton Abbey as collateral for a loan. But Edith, angry at her sister's betrayal, played into her friendship with the Mitford Sisters and the sweet words of her fiancé with rancorous insult, before informing Mary that their papa was not the owner of the house.

The actual manor of Downton Abbey belonged to the Lord of Downton. If she wanted Downton Abbey as collateral, she'd have to get George to agree. Quickly, off the heels of Edith's victorious counter, Robert also stated that he'd not make any major, long lasting, financial decisions without his Heir's approval. Mary was furious at her family. The Estate was facing ruin, and they all wanted to give the one decision that could save it over to the one person who was okay with everything they hold dear going up in effigy.

They all knew that George would say no. Beyond never agreeing to anything that meant so much to his mama, they all knew, since his youth, that George was an ardent American Constitutionalist – a sentiment that had only grown stronger as he had gotten older. He was practically an anarchist with how much New York, Memphis, New Orleans, and his dealings with Jim Crow Democrats taught him to distrust any government. Anything other than Anarcho-Capitalism would not be approved by him. Thus, the boy would sooner see his family on the streets than doing business with "The Socialist Sickness" of the Nazi and Soviets.

The battle lines had been drawn amongst the family and Mary found herself completely alone. Having been held off by her papa and Edith's united front, Mary stormed off to London in anger to reconsolidate her options. They all loved the woman, and knew that, even with her rude, condescending, attitude; she was just trying to save the family Estate. But Cora knew her eldest little girl enough to know that there was a strong chance that Mary would do something incredibly stupid to achieve her goals. And it was Edith who suggested the threat that Mary might try to forge George's signature.

Thus, it was decided that an expedition party would be organized amongst only those who Lord Grantham trusted most. Though no one had heard from George in the last two years, his whereabouts being only rumors and his Aunt Edith's theories, they'd set off for the American Southwest. There, they would track their missing heir down to bring him home as a precaution against his mother's 'political' friends whispering in her ear.

Fore, it was not advertised, and few knew, but quietly, the Old King Emperor had pardoned George "The Comet" Crawley in secret – as Sybbie had asked as her final favor of her "father".

And in a deeply sentimental letter written by the King to Lady Grantham, speaking of rumors he had heard of their young beauty's illicit entrapments, he asked that Sybbie be sent on Holiday, at his own expense. Thus, the girl was so suddenly and taken at unawares when she was drafted by her Granny and Donk to go on the expedition to Texas as a voice that could convince George to come home. But it was poorly received by the young beauty, fore it was at this time that Sybbie's heart had been filled with ill will and horrid pictures.

Roger Sinclair – Third highest grossing actor in Hollywood – Nazi Spy and Saboteur – heard from Sybbie's own pillow like lips of Lord Grantham and Lady Hexham's schemes to return the young Lord of Downton. Thus, with all his skill of word and manipulations he worked his mastery upon her in the weeks before her departure. He would not have the young and beautiful mind and body he had ensnared and entrammeled in his webs to be freed by George – having heard much of the young Captain's ability to capture the very heart and soul of those who loved him. Thus, he never relented and abusively indoctrinated his love captive of the villain that waited in the wild lawless place where the deplorable rogue made his ranging.

He told her that George wouldn't be able to help himself when he saw her. Evilly and perversely the man whispered in the girl's ear how George would take her. He'd steal her virtue, claim her as his, and sully her gladly. He was a churlish, blood thirsty, savage, who knew only killing. He had been corrupted by the envies of his friendships with the 'degenerate races' that wished to touch lily white beauty. And the girl only languished at how the very idea of her violation, of George's rough dominance of her had made Lady Mary's blackmailer and Sybbie's captor hot with desire. Then, the Hollywood Movie Star threw her down on her mama's own bed and took her right there. In his evil throes he whispered such perverted and terrible things that awaited her in Texas, doing to her what he fantasized George would do when he had her, narrating the entire time. And that vile and cruel man, for a time, succeeded in twisting her mind. Thus, as they left for America, Sybbie's heart had been turned against the young man she had loved all her life. Roger Sinclair had made the girl believe that the only reason that people liked Sybbie, loved her, was for her face and her naked beauty.

But that was not the young man that she had met a month later, that was not a George that existed in any world of the universe, not as long as he was the son of Matthew Crawley.

Though the young man was deeply unhappy to see them in such a rough and uncivilized place as where they found him. And he was unwelcoming to his Uncle Tom, who he hadn't seen in eight years and thought him sent as a spy by Mary. But he was overjoyed to see their Aunt Edith and especially Marigold. The Ballerina seemed like oxygen to a drowning man as she leapt into his arms and the two embraced deeply, exuding a love so potent that it captured even the most dangerous patrons of the little Mexican cantina on "Senora's Death Row".

But for Sybbie, George was happy only for a moment. The same relief for Marigold was in his eyes for her after near a decade without seeing or hearing from a girl he still loved beyond all hope and with all his heart. That was till Sybbie addressed him. She was, in that moment, the very breath of a Princess of the Royal House of Winsor. Her accent was polished and elegant, bitter and cold, and haughty and prideful. She showed great arrogance and contempt for the very rugged youth in front of her as if he were the very enemy of her regal and royal family.

To this Marigold was offended, Edith dismayed, and Tom confused. He could never believe, not in a thousand years, that he'd hear Sybbie, his Sybbie, talk to George, of all people, the way she had. But just as quickly did the boy, grievously hurt and black tempered by her haughty words, cut right back at what he saw as stereotypical 'Belgravia Trash'. He came at her tenfold with a tongue like a scalpel. Of his words to her, they would later sting her bitterly for a long time in private, the wound festering in her twisting heart for weeks.

What followed of that tale was an adventure of a lifetime. It was rousing, dangerous, gallant, and full of swashbuckling. In the early morning of the next day, horrible villains, Pistoleros – as George called them - came shouting and shooting, riding through town on horses. Immediately, they attempted to storm the inn that Edith, Marigold, Tom, Sybbie, and George had been staying in. It was said that they had come with the intention of kidnapping Sybbie, paid in full by a Persian Princess named Pamuk. But on that morning, Sybbie's heart changed to George, fore valiantly and tirelessly did he defend the girl he loved at extreme risk to himself, driving off the Mexican Mercenaries with great loss. And they were ever daunted and afear of the fell ferocity in the young man's eyes as he stood guard of the girl he loved with his famed weapon in hand. Thus, with their plans astray, they instead absconded with Tom Branson, believing falsely that the rather dapper Irishman had been Lord Grantham himself.

In the aftermath, George had sent Marigold and Sybbie on the first train to San Antonio. Though they fought him at first, the youth would not hear of their pleas to stay and help. This place that they found themselves in, that they had tracked him too, was not for titled and pampered ladies raised in the gentle fairy halls of Downton Abbey and Buckingham Palace! They were fools to have come to that dangerous place looking as they had in their rich raiment! They had shown up in their diamonds and expensive clothing, not even hiding their posh accents from droves of scum and villains that populated the border of a Depression stricken America and a very impoverished and lawless Mexico! The boy would not suffer to leave girls he loved alone in a place like this. But his authority did not govern Lady Edith of whom refused to leave Tom, her brother, to the mercy of revolutionary mercenaries. Nor would she allow "her boy" to rescue Tom alone, to face so many knives and guns without help. So, they sent the girls back to a foreign city to wait, to fear, to cry, and to hope.

It was hell, pacing the halls of the Menger Hotel in downtown San Antonio. The many nights of lying in bed and not sleeping. Every day and each night she held Marigold tightly, kissing her brow as she cried herself to sleep in worry of losing everything. It was the possibility that her Uncle Tom, Aunt Edith, and George would never come back. Then, they'd be stranded, and Marigold wouldn't have anyone in the world. Sybbie told her, comforted her, that she would always have her. But her dread on those dark nights in a strange city, in a strange land, was that she would return to Downton as empty handed, to be thrall to Roger Sinclair, her body sold ever afterward, until there was not anything to fight for anymore. Then, without her daddy, without George, she would give over to the darkness. Sybbie would fully become a creature of the night, evil, lustful, and irredeemable. She shed no tears in those dark days, only felt the cold seduction of the gluttonous spider of midnight dreads that slid down from her dark web and whispered such black discord and nightmares to the pale beauty.

But when the rest of their party returned beyond hope and unlooked for, weeks later, Sybbie's heart turned to George again fully.

But she saw him only in a different shade of the same evil that her abuser darkened her soul with. Fore he was not the same George she remembered. His war down the Delta and on the Bayou against the very malice of humanity, and the terror of the oldest and blackest of evils risen from the depths of the downfallen kingdom of the Sea Kings of the West, had made him hard in both speech and in look. But he was not the wild and lusty savage that they said him to be, that her slaver convinced she'd find. He was poor in cloth and in means, but was dashing, noble, and valiant. He was much beloved by his many friends as a captain of men. Also had he ever been well respected and greatly feared amongst even his most dastardly and vile of adversaries. It had been eight years since she had last looked upon her cousin and adopted brother. Then, he was but a boy, not close to a man grown. But the young man that she found in Texas was almost unrecognizable.

His blonde curls had washed out to a raven black like her and their granny. His accent of home was fully gone, as if he never had one. And most of all he was handsome, the most handsome youth to be seen, even compared to the fairest of the lads in the hallowed halls of Harrow and Eton back home. His differences, his change of appearance in the long years of their separation, and her madness coupled together. Within bred a horrible reason to the wicked seeds planted within her. The lies of midnight, the lustful ill done at home, filled Sybil Branson with such darkness and confusion in a place so removed, so unlike home.

Even as she lay in her beaten and bruised daddy's arms, her head pillowed against his broad chest, listening to his heartbeat. She was taken by the poison sting of the evilest of spiders that hell had wrought to torment. And in her craze, she had taken to logic the foulest of reasons for comfort. She had left her daddy in the middle of the night. When he asked where she was going, the girl had answered honestly, and it made him smile. Tom Branson could never decipher the double meaning of what his little girl had meant. He was only glad to know that - in his ignorance of the truth - some things hadn't changed.

When Sybbie knocked, the hotel door was answered by a very annoyed George. She didn't even ask if she was allowed, she simply walked in as if this was still their shared room in Downton. But she paused to find that he wasn't alone. Marigold was already lying on his bed in her nightgown. She smiled and seemed happy to see her, despite Sybbie noticing the imprint behind her, a telltale sign that George and she had been snuggling together. Her back lying against his chest, wrapped up in his arms like the comfort of a warm blanket. It was the only time that Sybbie Branson ever saw, for just a split-second, the truth of things that had been hidden from everyone for years. Before her, unknowingly to all in the room, were the last days of the blissful ignorance between the heir and his family's ward, before the truth in a name destroyed a great love that seemed written in the stars for so long.

For just a few beats of emotional weight, the three, George, Sybbie, and Marigold were alone again in a room, together for the first time since before the "Sacking of Downton" and George's escape across the sea. There was a light in Marigold's eyes, which welled with tears. She took Sybbie's hand and held it to her breast, but when she reached for George's other, the boy moved it. He believed Sybbie to be nothing but "stuck-up nonsense". He saw her now as a pretty little dolly that the "Old Hanoverian Tyrant" liked to dress up and teach to talk. Her words and attitude on the border colored his perception of an effete, spoiled, prissy debutante. And he made it clear that he didn't want anything to do with the girl, despite the passionate way he defended her to the last when the Turkish Lady's mercenaries came for her.

George was fell of mood when he snarled for Sybbie to get the hell out of his room. But then an old and childish defiance drew Sybbie to anger and stubbornness, and instead, she grabbed her bag and stormed into George's bathroom. Angrily the boy pursued, till she slammed the door before he could stop her. He pounded on it savagely and demanded that she come out so he could kick her fancy and spoiled ass. But Sybbie only sang, _loudly_ , attempting to drown out the boy's rage. When he could not dislodge Sybbie from his bathroom, he turned to find Marigold's body shaking.

But it was not sorrow, but laughter. Her mind was suddenly swimming in memories of what it was to truly be in a room alone with her best friends. She had romanticized a world in which they were like their parents and Aunt Edith, a circle, holding hands and praying with the mutual love of their bond. But it was now clear from the inevitable cursing, yelling, and rage that the serenity of Mary, Tom, and Edith's bond was never going to be their children. So, Marigold left in amused humor, ignoring George calling her back. The girl only said that it was a long train ride to Fort Worth, and that they'd have time together later. For now, she left George to deal with Hurricane Sybbie that had come ashore to blow him off course.

The boy was in a sour mood when he watched his earth angel blow him a heartfelt kiss before entering their Aunt Edith and her suite. George had angrily kicked his bathroom door and asked the girl inside if she was proud of herself, and promised that when she came out of there, he was going to kick the upper class bullshit out of her. But his threats rang hollow as the room got quiet. He didn't know what she was doing in there, but his anger receded quicker than his harsh words had.

What he didn't know was that the girl was working delicately on the most hauntingly beautiful look she could make. Her make-up kit was open, curler iron was hot, and her eyes were glassy. One would have thought that she was getting ready for her wedding day … or her wedding night. In the open space of the modern American bathroom of the Menger Hotel, the darkness of sin, lies, and self-loathing swirled about her like a dark cloud of sulfur in Hell. She'd trade one more wicked deed to relieve a cancer that ate away her very soul with its oozing tar of vileness, meant to ruin her forever.

It was over an hour, late into the night, before she finally revealed herself.

George had been cleaning his famed 'Ray Gun', self-crafting his own 'special' ammunition for his weapon. He was preparing for a final confrontation with "The Necromancer" that had escaped death and capture in New Orleans during a sword duel with the boy after he had kidnapped Marigold. Before George could return home, he had business with the most frightening figure that had ever haunted dreams. A red ceremonial robe, a golden necklace of an ancient scorpion talisman made of jade with ruby eyes. But above all else of his attire was an African mask carved from the Nubian Tree, scaled and horned. Of Professor Moriarty's face, he had quite forgotten now, all he saw was the mask. He was evil, infused with the fell spirit of a great conjuror and sorcerer of black magic of the elder days of pre-history.

He had killed many people that George cared for in New Orleans and before that in the sunken ruins of the downfallen realm of ancient men. Many of those whom he held dear had met their doom in the cruelest and most unnatural ways. Deeds and mutilations done that were too heinous and horrible to be seen by someone so young to corpses too young for such desecration. And in their gruesome memories that haunted his worst nightmares, the boy was prepared to finally deliver justice at gun or knife point. He had dueled the monster twice before. Ms. Mina Murray had saved George by horribly burning the Necromancer in her death throes during their first fight. George had put out one of his eyes in the second fight. And in their last duel, the boy had taken Moriarty's hand with his great-grandfather's Rebel saber. The final time that waited, George swore, would end with the creature drawing his final breath.

But thoughts of this long-sought final battle that waited were halted. When he looked up from his plyers, casings, and special powder given to him by the mother superior of the abbey on the Nueces, he saw Sybbie standing by his hotel window. Her pale skin, long glossy tresses, and cerulean eyes shimmered in the light of the full moon. She stood before George completely naked, slender, and perfect. Lotion and scented oils glistened off her skin till it looked and felt like silk. Her face was made up to a perfect loveliness in the ways she knew George had once liked, a fancy for stories of crusaders, dragons, and magical princesses. She was everything that anyone could ever want, and she had offered all of it to George, for a price of one request …

That he would make love to her.

It was the madness of one night that dominated and poisoned her to the very essence that made her who she was. It was the night that she allowed Roger Sinclair, her mama's fiancé to kiss her, to undress her, to worship her. It was the crazed look in his eyes of the deepest passion and most devoted loyalty. It was the horrible way he cared, diligently making sure that there was never a moment of discomfort. It was the decay under the surface of the sweetest words of love whispered in her ear as he brought her closer and closer. It was the pure joy, the ecstasy, the powerful pleasure of the release under the safety and dedicated brown eyes of love that she so easily surrendered too. And afterward it slowly killed her, tormented her, and made her cry tears of rage of such a betrayal. It drove the girl into fits of manic madness, of angry obsessions, and the blackest of depressions. All the while Sinclair took great joy in the dominance, in the knowledge of what he stole from the girl.

Sybbie couldn't live with the idea, with the knowledge that the man her mama had loved, had been the first and only person who had ever made love to her. For others that had bought her, they had sex. They were men filled with lust for a nubile and fresh young girl. Even the old dowagers and stuffy society matrons were more interested in worshiping her with ritual than intimacy, taking pleasure in watching the girl in the shower, lathering her personally, feeding her grapes as the women soaped their goddess's water slick flesh.

Yet, it still remained a detail that pained her, warped her, and even drove her to dark thoughts when she saw Thomas cleaning Donk's shotgun. It was like a seed of evil within her that was slowly blossoming cruel branches which sprouted within her, the roots digging deep, drinking her life force from inside. It's evil ever watered by the smug look on Sinclair's face when he sees her with Mama, knowing what he had done to the cold and elegant Lady Mary's little girl in the same bed he often made love to her. The look that only Sybbie knew, the dark knowledge that the cruel and vile man had taken both mother and daughter in the same bed.

She was desperate that night, filled with lies, torment, and an entire Aristocracy's lusts for everything such a strong and beautiful young woman had in her future. They had convinced her that she was a being of sexual power, of irresistible figure, of great worth without clothing. They had told her that no one, not even George, could resist the need, the desire to have her. She found him to not be the crass barbarian they said he would be, violent and filled with lust. Instead he was handsome, brave, and kind. He looked different than she remembered. But he had something inside him that she thought was the cure to all her ills.

He loved her.

She'd set ablaze all their happy yesterdays, all her wholesome longing for her brother back, and give up any future they might have by each other's side to have this sickness out of her. She'd give anything to feel someone inside her, to open her eyes and only see the face of someone who loves her, who would not hurt her. He was someone who didn't want to consume her soul, to turn her into a goddess of political gain in her fortune to come. She just wanted someone to love her, to allow her to surrender, and know that it was to someone who only wanted to make her feel safe. For that, she would do anything. Just so when she returned to her life of weakness and betrayals, she'd have something to remember, to hold onto when the crows would come to feast upon her in the night.

But the world trembled that day, and she felt the universe become consumed by a great void of singularity. Fore in George's matching eyes, she did not see what the lies and deceit in her heart told her was wisdom. He looked upon her body, on her face, and she saw no spark, no desire, and no uncontrollable lust. Had it been any other man he would've been on her, biting, chewing, and thrusting all the way to the bed. Had it been any woman they would beckon her over smugly, her hands would wander, explore, pet, and stroke. Her lips would kiss, suckle, and savor the taste, all the while her eyes never looking anywhere but into Sybbie's with condensation and dominance over their 'poor _delicious_ girl'.

But George just stared at her in anticipation of what she wanted, what she was waiting for. He wasn't confused, simply unsure of what she wanted from him. It never crossed his mind that the one person who meant the whole universe to him, whom he loved more than anyone in the world, was someone he'd take in lust. He knew how gorgeous she looked standing there, perfection in the romantic moonlight, and he was nearly blinded by her beauty, cherishing it privately.

But he loved her too much to ever hurt her as others had.

The girl looked shattered when the young man turned away for a moment and back. Saying "here", he tossed something to her from inside his old familiar leather pack. Against her breasts she caught a linin nightgown with thin shoulder straps. The boy had been convinced that the girl had left her night clothing behind, that she had come to him for help, which was why she was naked and glistening in front of him. He told her the story of having it on him since he first arrived in Austin, informing a breaking girl that sometimes people would take new clothing as currency for food in the very poor parts of the Southwest.

He was in the middle of telling Sybbie how a simple blouse could save your life in Laredo when she began to sob quietly, holding the balled cloth to her bare breasts. She collapsed to her knees, keeling over the nightgown in absolute devastation. Not only did she make a fool of herself, but it now seemed impossible to ever rid the stink, the rot of Roger Sinclair's blackmail from her soul. She had been convinced for days that only George could've saved her, and now there was no one.

The young man immediately went after her. He didn't understand what had happened, why everything that she was had been hanging on by a thread. He took her in his arms and held her, peppering her face with kisses. She buried herself in his embrace as they knelt on the floor together, George rocking her back and forth. He nuzzled her hair and whispered comforts, promises of love and loyalty. But the girl only responded in desperation. She took his face in her palms and kissed him on the lips with passion, with need, more need than she ever had in her life. She had a greed for love, for the poison of her awful deeds to be drawn out of her like an infected wound. She wanted this night to mean something, to feel something real and raw that was so pure.

George forcefully, wrathfully, broke their kiss. Then, he slapped the manic girl across the cheek. Her perfect raven curls showering over her face as her head turned from the sobering force. He grabbed the naked girl by her arms and tossed her on his bed. She was sobbing, reeling, a shaking arm holding her body up while she clasped her cheek in tears. George picked up the nightgown and flung it at the naked girl's creamy figure. He forcefully commanded that she put it on. She was easily cowed in her mortification and embarrassment of the situation. She did as bid shakily, slipping the nightgown over her head and covering herself. Then, George tackled her down onto the bed. All she thought in her staggered state was that all she wanted from him was a kiss. If he had just kissed her once, really meant it, then she'd be alright with whatever he wanted to do to her, she'd gladly be his forever.

But George never touched her in that way.

He pinned her down to the bed and encased her in a restraining embrace. When the damaged girl saw, felt, what he was intending to do … she struggled against it. She wanted him inside her. She wanted him to replace an ambitious man's punishment for Sybbie's sins. She did not want this! She did not want him to do this to her! She did not want him to take her into his heart, to love her unconditionally. She was wicked and horrible, sleeping with their mama's fiancé and everyone else he sold her to for the highest bidder. She was allowing herself to be a love slave and sick object of obsession to an aristocracy to cover up such irredeemable wickedness that she had done to George eight years ago. She was a cold and awful temptress that so easily betrayed the boy she loved.

She could not be forgiven.

And yet, George, without knowing the level of duplicity of such things she did in the dark of Downton, forgave her. He loved her without breaking. Sybbie struggled, fought, worming her way across his bed, scratched and pushed. But George would not let go of her. She threatened, cursed, spat, and begged. But he would not let her go. The teenage girl sobbed and broke. She let out cries of anguish as if her festering wound was being cleaned with disinfectant.

Finally, she could not fight him anymore, she tired herself out. Once more, George flattened her across the bed. He pinned her arms above her head, tears gleaming in the moonlight on her milky cheeks. Then, he buried his face into her bosom, wrapping his arms around her. It was a deep and intense hug. It blew away the spider webs, the guilt, and the slimy tar within her soul. Then, there was only their love, their connection that had been there for their entire lives. The world didn't exist outside that door, didn't exist past that bed. There was only the two of them. They were only two people that loved each other so completely that nothing else they had done or will do had mattered.

When he released her arms, she immediately wrapped them around his neck and held him hard to her. She apologized profusely for her perceived selfishness, whispering redemption in how much she loved him. In his final embrace of her, she felt all the loneness, the regret, guilt, and his own darkness. In that moment she realized that he needed her as much as she needed him that night. He did not force his tongue down her throat, or bend her over his desk, and he had no need for the feel of her silken flesh. He just needed her, needed someone he loved.

It was a simple kind of love that was essential to his soul. Not the complicated secrecy of his romance with Marigold, or the old regrets that plagued his relationship with their family. He was sickened by the long dark road of exile that had burdened his soul with much tragedy and pain. And only Sybbie, the wholesomeness and strength of their love for each other, was the cure. In that need she was grateful to let go of everything that was killing her inside out in her own life and be there, to be relied upon to simply love and care for George that night. She held him tightly to her, nuzzling his head, and snuggling him to her closely. From the depths of hell and despair, she found only heaven as the two eventually fell asleep in one another's arms, protected by a circle of safety they created around themselves. Without making love, without burning down the last pillar of her strength, Sybbie had found a memory she could safely envelop and disappear into.

It was a place where no one could touch her.

And those deep feelings had overcome her every time that she saw George, even now. Her eyes lightened and glassed over in the heart-breaking lilt of sympathy and longing that she felt strongly while watching the silhouette against the firelight glow of the study. In the shadows was a young man who looked so weathered by the many things wonderous and terrible that he had seen too much and early in life as he sat alone by the fire - as he had most of his life. The many desperate and lonesome years in bitter exile was etched on his exceedingly fair face that sat with a grim continence and darkly brooding mood. He was sharp, guarded, serious, and incredibly hardened.

George Crawley had fought a war in New Orleans against a great evil and buried most of his friends and companions with his own two hands by the end of it. He had spent a year in the darkness of an ancient Asylum, surrounded by the violent insane, having to fight and kill the worst monsters afflicted with an evil cruelty. He traveled from Fifth Avenue in New York all the way to New Orleans on foot and by train, twice. His odyssey spent eluding Pinkerton Detectives through the American Northeast, and Ku Klux Klansmen through the American South. And in between spending time on a Memphis chain gang, freezing in the late autumn with no food to speak of.

He had been locked away in two of the worst prisons on the North American continent. What Sybbie had known of his time in a Memphis Labor Prison in Tennessee, and of Saltillo Penitentiary in Mexico, was nothing. However, she overheard in Texas that George had escaped from "The Asylum" while in Saltillo's Spanish Mission. When she asked what that meant, they told her that it was simply a more complex way of saying Hell.

This prompted Sybbie to ask Mr. Bates when they returned home, knowing full well that it could be considered very distasteful to impress upon him of his knowledge of Prison. However, the always kind man was ever gentle and understanding. But when Sybbie mentioned that she heard that George was thrown into the deepest cell in the dungeons of a Spanish Mission for a year in Saltillo's Asylum, she swore that Mr. Bates grew five years older right in front of her. The rest of the servant's hall tried to look as if they weren't eaves dropping when they all put down their tea and cake in sickness, when Mr. Bates told the girl that he'd rather spend twenty years in his old prison cell, than six days in that horror. He informed her - and by proxy everyone else at the servant's tea - that it was a place reserved for the most dangerous and disturbed prisoners that had been labeled criminally insane. It was the worst place to be in any prison, but certainly a hundred times more nightmarish in an old and barbaric Mexican Prison. And Mr. Bates concluded by saying that it was a rare and special kind of man who could last so long in such a place, much less escape it with his wits still intact.

When it finally occurred to her what the young man she loved endured and overcame all alone, Sybbie was heavy with emotion by the time she had reached the grand hall. Later, in the early days of his return home, she put the question to George of such a place while they were a bed with their mama one night. But the peaceful stillness of Crawley House was disturbed when George rebuked Sybbie sternly, telling her to never again ask him about it. Then, after a long silence, he sighed apologetically and told her that it was impossible to make anyone understand that had not been in that horrific place, and neither would he try too …

He loved her too much.

In 1913 Kamal Pamuk, the son of the Ottoman Sultan's cousin and a Persian Princess, died in the arms of Lady Mary Crawley one night, after pushing into her room without permission or want. Out of revenge, two decades later, the embittered aunt of the King of Iran paid a regal ransom in bribes and corruption in order to have the son of Lady Mary thrown into a dank, subterranean dungeon, with the worst and most evil criminals. There, he'd be murdered, or better yet, go insane. She was convinced that George Crawley would pay for his young mother's crimes by being lost forever to the caterwauling babblings of the foulest insanity that a sane mind could withstand. All the while monsters and demons, of flesh and the conjured mind, wander, their footsteps ever echoing closer and closer in endless darkness.

And it is said that amongst all of George Crawley's many adventures and dangers over the years, of his time imprisoned in Saltillo's "Mission" he would never speak of to anyone, for fear of the evil madness of that place to return to inflict his mind.

Yet, Lady Mary lay awake for a long time after his rebuke and explanation to Sybbie. And when she thought he was asleep; she gave him a gentle penitent kiss. Laying her head next to his on the pillow, a tear of guilt slid down her freckled pallid countenance for the consequences of her old sin that was visited upon her boy, and how dearly he had paid for it in her stead.

Then, there came ever the times when George helped hold off the Estate on the tenant farms, or even just manual labor around his own home. During the hardest of the work, the youth would start muttering lyrics to some song. But as he began building momentum and rhythm, his voice would start getting louder, revealing that he was singing "Negro prison songs' that were drilled into the fabric of his soul like the pounding of his old prison hammer while on a Tennessee Chain Gang. He relived the memories of those frozen highways and train tracks, a young boy breaking rocks or driving a railroad spike with the swing of a sludge hammer through sleet and freezing rain. A boy trying to not think of the old men and young boys of every skin color that were dying from the cold and starvation around him.

These memories lived on in every swing and in the ringing devastation of his powerful strikes. Sometimes, he lost himself in them, seeming possessed to bystanders as he sung to the rhythm of every hit. In those strange and darkest of moods, George often frightened the tenants and their farmhands with the aggressive and violent strikes that were tireless. The American prison shanties sung to the rhythm of the hammer or axe unnerved the Yorkshiremen. These songs with their sorrowful meanings and languishing lyrics spoke to a history of a completely different universe from the wholesome brooks, ancient forests, and freshly tilled fields of the old-world countryside of Northern Yorkshire.

During her time in the private captivity of Crawley House - when George first took her prisoner after retaking the county - Lady Mary had once gone searching for a chilling singing that echoed faintly and haunted her heart. Then, she had awoken one cold grey morning to feel the absence of warmth provided by George who often – despite old resentments – spooned to her tightly in sleep. With discomfort and half-asleep uncaring for past squabbles, Mary reach behind her to drag her son’s arm back around her tight satin covered waist and drape him tight about her for his coveted warmth she was used to in the morning. But when the beautiful prisoner turned in annoyance, she found George long gone from bed.

In a strange mood of his absence, after weeks of watching her like a hawk – including forcing her to share his bed at night – she paced outside in search of her jailer and her cherished ‘big spoon’ on cold winter mornings. It was then, among the old devastation, she heard what sounded like booming machinery being synched to a rhythmic alien song that echoed sharply through the ruins of the old village. She frowned gently and followed it past the iron gate. When Sybbie found their mama, Mary was standing in the cold with nothing but her liquid satin nightgown, absolutely still, transfixed. She followed her glassy gaze over to the lone figure of George breaking fallen stone of a burnt-out old building from the weathered and scorched ruins that had collapsed and was blocking the main thorough faire. He was singing loudly to his work rhythm, completely unaware of his mama and Sybbie's presence, lost in a terrible memory. His aggression was almost manic as he smashed stone with machine like efficiency with knee shaking force.

" _O Lord.. Berta.. Berta... O Lord gal oh-ah  
O Lord.. Berta.. Berta... O Lord gal well now_

_Go 'head and marry. Don't you wait on me, oh-ah  
Go 'head and marry. Don't you wait on me, well now  
Might not want you when I..I go free oh-I  
Might not want you when I..I go free well now  
... O Lord gal oh-ah  
O Lord Berta Berta O Lord gal well now_

_Raise them up higher. Let em drop on down oh-ah  
Raise them up higher. Let em drop on down well now  
Don't know the difference when the sun go down oh-ah  
Don't know the difference when the sun go down well now_

_Berta in Meridian and she living at ease oh-ah  
Berta in Meridian and she living at ease well now  
I'm on old Parchman, got to work or leave oh-ah  
I'm on old Parchman, got to work or leave well now_

_Oh-ah Berta Berta O Lord gal oh-ah  
Oh-ah Berta Berta O Lord gal well now_

_When you marry, don't you marry a.. farming man oh-ah  
When you marry, don't you marry a.. farming man well now  
Everyday, Monday, hoe handle in your hand oh-ah  
Everyday, Monday, hoe handle in your hand well now  
When you marry, marry a.. railroad man oh-ah  
When you marry, marry a.. railroad man well now  
Everyday Sunday, dollar.. in your hand oh-ah  
Everyday Sunday, dollar.. in your hand well now_

_Oh-ah Berta Berta O Lord gal well now  
Oh-ah Berta Berta O Lord gal well now"_

The cold and emotionless Lady Mary was deep in the mires of a sorrow that broke her daughter's heart. When she finally made herself known to her, she quickly wiped it away and acted as if the whole scene was an annoyance to her morning. She did not acknowledge that anything was amiss as they went back inside. But it was clear that whatever she saw or imagined, had bothered the sleek and pale woman greatly for the rest of the day.

For just a few moments, Lady Mary Crawley had been standing on the side of a Southern American highway, watching her starving young child being forced into hard labor in the freezing cold. His gang mates dying away little by little, night after night, till her boy and his friends were the last on the line. A pitiful band of ragged young boys, the last survivors, singing the same songs through teeth chattering shivers as fat bellied deputies remained stone faced with heavy jackets, shotguns, and terrifyingly vicious Hunting Hounds on leashes. And, while on that line, frozen precipitation pelting a young boy's face mercilessly, his mama was nowhere to be found. She sat at fashion shows and dinner parties, not even knowing that her child was wasting away in such a God forsaken place.

She had privately thanked God that Edith had found him when she did. The Marchioness of Hexham had moved Heaven and Earth to locate and pull him out of that terrible Hell before he succumbed to sickness and starvation. Tears spilled from the Marchioness's eyes as she held the ragged and tattered young boy tightly to her when the gates opened upon his and his friend's release. He squished to her tightly, relishing her body heat. In Edith and Marigold's combined hug was the first warmth and love George Crawley had felt in months since his escape from New York City.

[ _("Hector the Hero" – Natalie MacMaster)_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rllVluZlPjM)

He had killed many men before and since, had heard and seen them die in most horrific and meaningless ways that this awful "Depression" could conjure to torment the human spirit. The youth had buried friends and family with his own two hands - alone on some nameless highway many thousands of miles from the comfort of safety and love. Eight years later, upon his return to Downton, he was not met with joy and elation, but bitter battle, forcing him to fight and kill for a birthright that many fought so hard to keep away from one who they deemed was unworthy of his own name and House. And it was a sentiment that pervaded since then.

In truth, the boy spent many years dreaming of a place called home that so many nights he could almost grasp in his fitful rest upon the open starry glades, stone Antebellum ruins, barren badlands, and cold Mexican dungeon cell. But when he returned, he had found his childhood home, friends, and even love, dead and buried. And of those who had taken their place in the picturesque town, built upon their forgotten bones, were fiercely unwelcoming and hateful of the old master. And tonight, of all since, Sybbie saw how deeply etched on his face in the firelight, in the privacy of his father's old chair, the realization. That much of their family and, indeed, his country, taken as a whole after so many years … simply did not want George Crawley back.

A single tear slid down Sybbie's cheek in a heart sickened with sorrow as she tentatively approached the man she loved more than life itself.

She had seen the way that George had fought with mama and Donk today. And, though she was told she had nothing to do with it, she couldn't help but feel he'd tear into her if he saw her. But still, though flinching in his intense presence, she felt impelled - with all those reminders of his suffering - to offer him an alternative to his usual lonely brooding. Gently, she walked into the room. Her satin dress slid over the plush rug behind her Uncle Matthew's chair. George puffed blue smoke from the corner of his mouth.

The muttered word "modern" came out distractedly and absently from inner stream of consciousness as if it was some natural disaster that one must withstand and endure. It made the outstretching silk gloved hand pause in uncertainty. But eventually, Sybbie rested a gentle palm on the boy's cotton Henley covered shoulder. With a flinch, she thought that he'd turn wrathfully, in a startle, ill-tempered for having been disturbed. But instead, the young man eased into her touch, eyes closed. He seemed to savor the human contact after so long of it not being there for him. His reaction almost made more tears spill over from the teenage girl's eyes. It was hard to imagine going nearly a decade without that consistently being part of her everyday life, like it had for George.

He leaned back in his chair, turning his head toward the girl. A soft and grateful smirk grew sadly on his face when he saw the glow of her loveliness in the firelight. His pipe clicked against a tooth when he removed it from his mouth. He seemed emotional for a beat or two, his gaze softening upon her with every moment of being in her beautiful presence. One forgets, after so many years, the privilege of seeing someone you love on a whim, after being thousands of miles and oceans apart. In that moment, Sybbie's heart hurt from how much she loved him, how deep and clearly, she saw the pain he carried in one expression of seeing her on full dinner party parade – seeing everything he had missed for so long.

"Tú ag dul suas?" He asked softly in Gaelic.

The youth reached out and placed a warm hand on Sybbie's lower back with affectionate familiarity. She smiled sadly as he stroked the sinfully smooth pale skin absently. George had been so consumed by weighty questions of the future and regrets of many yesterdays that he assumed - by the late hour - that Sybbie was still staying in Crawley House. Though, she had moved back to the Abbey two days prior. The girl had only come on her walk, not really having anything in mind when she slipped out of the party. She guessed she had only dropped by the house, because, it had become muscle memory to do so. The only time she'd stray into the old ruins of the village, was to drop by to see what George was doing, if he needed help, or if he wanted company.

Sometimes, even when he wasn't home, she'd still come inside and lay on the plush sofa in the study, wrapping herself in the safety and comfort of the impenetrable quiet of Crawley House. Every once in a while, she'd awaken to find herself cuddled and spooned deeply in George's arms, his nose nuzzled into the crook of her pale neck. It never failed to make her teary eyed, nuzzling his nose with hers in a sighed relief of the safety of his love, to which she held more dearly than anything else in her life.

"I got the contract …" She reported demurely cautious. George didn't seem to react in any way she might have feared. He only smirked tiredly.

"I, uh, I heard." He nodded. "We'll celebrate … how about that place in York you liked last time?" he asked. "My treat …" he rubbed her bare back comfortingly.

"We've got a house party full of suitors and well-wishers at Downton." She informed him in playful chastisement. "They're all just dying to take me out and show me off." There was a charming smugness to her debutante attitude.

"Fine …" the young man chuckled under his breath with a defeated sigh. "Londain ansin?" He challenged with a mischievous smirk that reminded her of the old George she used to know. For a second Sybbie made an outraged noise, placing a silk gloved hand on her bosom and sticking her leg back, her mouth agape at the very cheek of the suggestion.

"Sounds perfect." She contradicted her entire body language.

There was no one in the world that got more of a thrill of standing up and mistreating the boys who love her more than Sybil Branson.

George looked incredibly tired in the smile and nod he gave her cute grin. There was something childlike in the way he wearily buried his face into her stomach for a long beat. It would seem strange to anyone who hadn't known the oldest form of affection between the two. It was in a time when a six-month-old George was unaware of how to show affection to a baby girl he had just met – after the first six months of a life living at Nampara House in Cornwall - whose abusive nanny made her cry again. Having been a foul tempered, stubborn, but unimpeachably gallant young babe, the squishiest of newborns, dragged his body across the crib. When he reached Sybbie, the infant buried his face in the baby girl's tummy in substitution for any other form of affection he did not know as one so new to the world. He lay there as the girl's tiny hand stroked his dark curls; her cries quieted to little hiccups. From that moment they were imprinted to one another.

And when they had no memories of the incident, they surely had the instincts developed between babies. Thus, no matter how old they got, George would still bury his face into Sybbie's sculpted belly, and the girl would automatically stroke his curls with the deepest of shared affections burned into their souls from the days of a shared crib.

She hadn't left Downton to stay overnight with George, only to go for a walk. But she wouldn't dream of leaving now, not when she was almost more relieved that he hadn't been cross with her, than actually winning the contract. The girl would call up Thomas and ask if someone could bring over a change of clothes in the morning. After designing futuristic machinery, maybe sixty years ahead of its time, sneaking out for a London weekend with George would be a nice and amusing caper to pull off as her next trick.

"Tú ag teacht suas?" She asked him, massaging the back of his head.

She smirked cherishingly when George kissed her satin covered navel chastely before breaking apart and looking up at her. "In a little bit … Ba mhaith liom é seo a chríochnú." He said thoughtfully, showing her the ember glowing pipe cupped in his palm. It seemed that whatever had been weighing on George's mind, it had not been dislodged by the girl's appearance, or the impromptu London incursion that was bound to drive their Donk, Granny, and mama mad with a full house to entertain.

"I'm gonna call Thomas …" She kissed his cheek in parting.

But as she strode to the doorway, heels clacking on the hardwood floor, she turned. There she found that George slid down a little further in his chair, the sole of his boot placed against the metal divider in front of the burning log of the fireplace. Quietly, he cast his mind adrift again, pipe in mouth. She watched as smoke once more left the corner of his mouth, hanging around his head in obscurity. His eyes consumed again by ember and fire, as thoughts weighed heavily on the most serious of matters.

If only the girl knew what it was that plagued him so …?

* * *

** Entr'acte Music **

[" _The Cost of the Crown" - Mercedes Lackey_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMbbbopeVfc&t=96s)


	7. Part IV

** Now **

Sergeant Willis had gone missing.

Of what they knew was that he had last been seen cycling toward the Grantham County Power Plant. There had been a report that some sort of break-in or trespassing was occurring. He had seemed unperturbed but - none the less - he went to go check it out. The police couldn't say they were surprised by the report. After all the writing in the papers and engineering trades that young Ms. Sybil's ingenious new contraption was getting, they had expected a certain level of 'site seeing' from interested competitors trying to replicate the technology. However, that was the last time anyone had seen Sergeant Willis.

It seemed that he had just up and left, disappearing out of sight and mind since that evening. All they found as evidence of his patrol was that someone had unsuccessfully tried to sabotage the new machine. However, it proved too complicated and bafflingly intricate, with its grids and cables, to be sabotaged properly. Later in the day they had found his bicycle on the other side of the Grantham Estate. The tire had been deflated, and the frame had been bent. One might have thought he had an accident. But George Crawley – crouching next to it – muttered that it was certainly made to look as such by someone with a strong arm and an iron hammer.

At news of this there had come a rather unnecessarily Large detachment of York Officers which arrived in the county, splitting up into groups. Lord Grantham and Tom Branson led volunteer parties from the tenets of the House of Grantham to scour the area. Though, it was noted that the young captain was not among them. And there were some that found it odd, perhaps even suspicious. Fore, the real difficulty seemed to be the unfamiliarity of the professionals with the countryside. Meanwhile the volunteers, who did know every footpath, had no professional training to see if anything they found in passing could be a clue. There was no method that could be applied in any definitive effectiveness.

That had been why they had the need of a certain young ranger that had been hard schooled in tracking and woodcraft by Captain Allan Quartermain and the Imakandi Tribe of Darkest Africa – skills that had helped him long survive exile and allude Bounty Hunters. But George Crawley, instead, kept his own counsel on the matter and would speak with none save Richard Ellis and Thomas Barrow.

Thus, it was, by the third day, bereft of Captain Crawley's guidance, both parties were all but stumped. And by the fourth day the inspector in charge was sure that there was some grand conspiracy led by someone in Downton Abbey. He had been convinced that "the townies" were hiding something that the "good sergeant" had found. And thus, it was on the fifth day, there came threats, proclamations, and promises of retaliation. The York inspector wanted to tear the town apart, go door to door, kicking everything down to uncover the mystery. The tenants, in response, said that they'd 'bop the Bobbie' that came into his or her house.

Thus, it came to pass, that for a third time in eight years the County of Grantham found itself sitting on a dangerous powder keg. Those who had been lifelong farmers and tenants of the House of Grantham had remembered well the atrocities that befell at the "Grantham County Massacre" and the siege and sacking of Downton Abbey. Nor had they forgiven the years of starvation beset upon them by Royal Decree till someone would betray their young Lord. But of most, did they carry a long memory of the brutal occupation of their land by the "Tyger Watch".

The denizens didn't like the look of the policemen that had been bussed into their community, pushing and ordering folk about, like they were the King's Own. It was the Government that got them into this mess in the first place and they could, jolly well, back off their toes. Meanwhile, the York Police saw only disorder and dissidence from the County of Grantham. The people of the countryside didn't take orders, didn't do what they were told, and the bleeding Grantham's ruled the place like they were the Royal Family. After several unfruitful rounds of 'what and who' with Lord and Lady Grantham, and several unpleasant, unfruitful, and unwise conversations with Lady Mary in the meantime, the Inspector had a lot of threats for the Earl of Grantham and Downton Abbey.

They would have to look into Lady Mary's business relationships, having seen her latest gowns and clothes. The good inspector was convinced that no one could afford such extravagance in times like these. That is, unless they were up to no good in the books and board rooms. Then, there was the business of Tom Branson's record as a Partisan for the Irish Republican Army, something that MI5 would be quite interested in. Of course. there was Lord and Lady Grantham's Valet and Lady's Maid, as well as Lady Mary's Anna. It seemed that Downton Abbey was a house filled with criminals who might have slipped the noose too soon.

Lord Grantham was furious, claiming that all of these matters had been laid to rest years ago. But he was informed by a rather smugly rancorous inspector that the days of Lords making phone calls to clean up messes were quite at an end. However, with one phone call from him, warrants could be drawn up for Mr. Branson, Mrs. Baxter, and Mr. and Mrs. Bates, at no time at all. The Inspector wanted answers of what they were hiding, and he'd get it, even if he had to lock up their old chauffeur and the rest of the help to do it.

For days the house was on pins and needles. It was a tricky and frightening situation. If they had been younger, had this happened ten, fifteen, years prior, they could have handled it. But now they had responsibilities, roots, and children that needed them. Sybbie might have had Mary. Marigold might have had Edith - but Tom was the only father to both girls, and how they loved the big hearted and kind man so desperately with all their souls. John and Anna Bates had two young children since they last left behind their endless troubles of the 'Roaring Twenties'. Where was young Johnny Jr. and precious little Lily supposed to go if their parents were arrested again, after all these years? Mrs. Hughes swore to look after them, but for how long?

It was best summed up by Mr. Moseley, who asked for an audience with His Lordship. The old history teacher stutteringly admitted, with suppressed emotion that came rather strongly, that he couldn't quite remember what his life was like without Mrs. Baxter … but he knew it to be of a poorer quality. He claimed not to have much credit in such departments, but he hoped that he might ask the favor of Lord Grantham to help his wife in any way that was possible. But when he left, Robert only slumped into the sofa, telling his wife, daughters, and Granddaughters that - to quote the Inspector - the days of a title meaning something were at an end.

His only comfort in such dark thoughts was being enveloped by a very worried Sybbie and Marigold, who clung to their Donk's chest. Cora met his eyes worriedly as the old man kissed both their heads and held them closely. They were all afraid to lose everyone they loved and grew up with, people who were like family, all in one foul swoop. The Crawley family found that in one week, everything they held dear was now hostage to an inspector who allowed the spite of his lower-class origins taint the original purpose of his presence.

However, the inspector's crusade through the picturesque whimsical town of Downton was stopped cold in the ruins of the old village and at the gate of the last homely house.

**NO ADMITANCE WITHOUT OFFICAL DOCUMENTATION**

"The bloody cheek!"

The Inspector knew, as did everyone in the town of Downton, that Ms. Sybil Branson and her partner had a fairly ugly falling out a month ago. And, as far as he was concerned, there was no bigger suspect than the odd, and some might even say 'cracked', adventurer. It was more than likely that he might have wanted to get revenge on his 'lady love' for things said and done in his house. However, the Inspector chaffed his last nerve at the large sign that hung off the gates of Crawley House. It wouldn't mean anything in most cases, except for two major obstacles that presented themselves.

The first was completely physical. And that was that Crawley House was completely guarded by a large perimeter wall and iron rolled gate. The current owner, who had an old Princess's Islamic Fatwa on his head, had taken time in his renovations to sand down the large stone wall so that it was completely without footing to be scaled. The gate was also barbed, in case someone tried to slip through the bars. The locals claimed that if Downton was under attack again, Crawley House would be the safest place in the entire county. On account of its natural defenses, and, of course, the man that defended it.

This was the main crux of the second obstacle, which was completely psychological. None of the officers dared to defy the sign. Fore they had heard too many stories to not heed the warning written in the owner's own hand. The Inspector found this entire episode to be complete and utter bullocks. Yet, not one of his men would accompany him on his daily harassment of Ethel Parks - as the housekeeper tended her beloved Lady Merton's famed country garden. Nor did they stay to see their superior DCI be ignored by Richard Ellis, the Butler of Crawley House, collecting the master's mail. And no one was ever sure what ate at the Inspector more. The attractive red head's complete ignorance of his calls and demands from behind the iron barded gate, or the fact that it was a former prostitute, of all people, who was sticking her nose up at him.

However, he finally got his chance when he passed Crawley House to find the gate open, and Mrs. Parks entering the very charming country house with her arms filled with groceries. He immediately sprang, jogging onto the concrete driveway where a motorcycle, under green tarp, was parked in a covered garage that the young master added. Having sufficiently cowed and bullied his way into control of town life, the policeman had no problem leaping over the waist high garden gate and stone wall onto the walking path to the front door. The aggressive man was poised to push into the house after days of humiliatingly shouting at a whore through a black iron gate, much to the amusement of his constables.

However, as he reached Crawley House's doorstep, he was met by Mr. Ellis with papers in his hand. There was a rather marshal smugness hidden behind his stiff and disciplined soldier's demeanor. The policemen snatched the papers Ellis served out of his hand. As he skimmed his anger grew and superior face fell more and more as he read directives, and more so, the signatures that were on them.

Winston Churchill might have been a has-been politician, a flip flopper on Conservative and Liberal politics. And he had certainly backed the wrong brother in the question of Royal Succession, especially when it came to Edward's choice of Queen. But his name still carried weight in London, and with Prime Minister Baldwin's signature on the forms, it seemed that when it came to law and order in Grantham County, the 38th Lord of Downton, Heir to the Earl of Grantham, had privileges that exceeded even the inspector's authority.

He had tried to accuse the Butler and his employer of forging the documents. But Ellis responded with giving his sudden adversary an ultimatum. The Inspector could either accept that he wasn't God, or he could get the documents verified, and in the process lose his place. It was up to him. The policeman stood long at the doorstep, glaring daggers at the Butler who slowly, but forcefully, slipped the documents from his grip. Knowing his choice, with the papers back in his hand, Richard Ellis bid the man a good day. But before he could close the gates, the inspector turned and asked him one question. He wanted to know where their master had been the last few days. Ellis replied with one word before shutting the gate on his face with a loud clank.

" ** _Hunting …"_**

A full harvest moon played hide and seek with the lush Northern landscape. Invisible clouds passed over in intervals, hopscotching the lighting of the quiet and freshly washed night. The man on the moon's indecision made one feel as if you were being tracked and caught in God's own searchlight. The moon rays giving the new rain droplets upon blades of grass, plant's leaves, and hold out flower petals from the last of summer's bloom a Midas's touch in the winking shimmer that made the forests glimmer like a gold mine. Beyond the woods, beside it, and all around the old stone barn between the Estate and Yew Tree Farm, there was nothing but mist and darkness. The fog crept over miles of rolling glen and little green hills. It came on slow and thick like the toxic miasma of a scaled beast of antiquity's breath.

Had it set its eyes upon the golden treasure of the forest? Had its scent been sent, billowing, ahead to scare away all competition? Or had its golden slit eyes fallen beyond the riches of the Yorkshire countryside, and enticed by the deep and dark sin found on this night? Did they call it forth with every manic turn of mind as hours, days, passed without knowing what to do? Or did it smell their desperation, their fear, as every trip to the village only brought graver news and situations. Whatever could be said of the night, there was no one as sure as Charlie Drake that there was a _beast_ in Grantham County that was roused, roaring, and there was no mistake that it was coming for them all.

The fighting had made him leave. He couldn't take the yelling, the crying, and the false bravado of what it was to be a man that made hard decisions. This wasn't what any of them had signed up for, especially him. But it was no use in voicing that sentiment now. All it did was press upon them that they were in the wrong. That no matter what they told themselves before, they were now bound to a race toward oblivion. There were tears, begging, pleading, and plenty of determined faces that were convinced there was no other way, not now, not with this York Inspector. They only had the choice of the noose, or to live the rest of their lives to atone for the mistakes they'd made when they return to their home and families.

But he wasn't sure that if they went through with this, that any one of them would be able to live it down.

It was those blasted coils, the bloody converters. It was that damn posh little cunny Sybil and her damned contraption. Sure, she was smashing to look at and admire - ain't no problem there. But in the end, she was the right proper daughter of Lady Mary, that one. Did they all really expect anything different from the "Sheriff of Granthingham's" own? She comes in, sticks her right posh nose into the whole business, and decided that they ain't good enough. That she's gotta show off to the world. There ain't nothing wrong with a little Yorkshire elbow grease, a little Northmen muscle to make a thing go. But, nah, the pretty princess wants better things, make her look good in front of them Lords and Ladies going in and out of the big house like it were some high-class hotel. It had been going so well, a little rust here and there in the works, the wheels needing a little more 'convincing' than usual.

All it took was for Lord Grantham to express a need for up keep and suddenly disaster strikes.

His old momma had always told him that the Grantham family couldn't be trusted. After his father, John Drake, died, Mr. Branson had been ever so kind to allow Charlie's mother to stay in the family home at Longfield Farm, even when the Estate took over the farming of their land. But Mrs. Drake was not satisfied, and furious that her sons had chosen to work at the Power Plant, rather than farm like their father, and his before him. But more to the point, she was unhappy to allow the Grantham's to take over the farm. She blamed it all on Lady Edith, who had been Marchioness of Hexham for some time now. But whenever they questioned her about what exactly Lady Edith did, their mother would only shout "she knows!" and say nothing else of the famed writer and literary Titan. But either way, despite his mother's warnings, Charlie Drake remembered clearly how he accompanied the rest of the senior leaders of the village into Crawley House to meet with "The Comet". And, despite the warnings, he had come out satisfied of the 'Cap'n's" assurances that it would all be fine. He swore they were just updating. He even invested to make them feel better; to make sure everything would turn out fine for them - the working blokes. But in the end Charlie knew he should've listened to Mrs. Drake, because, it wasn't, and it ain't been right since.

If it had been, then it would never have come to this.

The son of Farmer John Drake held off thoughts of his ailing old mother's grudge against Lady Edith when something moved in the distance. He didn't think about anything else as he picked up his old dad's hunting shotgun. He didn't hear it again, the sound, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was out there. He snapped open the barrel from the stock to confirm the red and copper shells loaded inside. With a closing clank of the double barrel weapon, he held it defensively in a relaxed aim as he walked, with trepidation, down the concrete path away from the Stone Barn. His eyes glanced long and deeply into the dark nothing. A misty abyss of hazy blackness had come rolling down the hills from the moors and glens that became invisible as sheer cloud cover dimmed the moonlight.

His hands began to shake the longer that he stared into the wall of black mist that reached into the sky. There was a feeling that he couldn't shake. It was the instinct that it was going to swallow him whole. He'd swear that it was all unnatural, that there was something otherworldly of this swirling obscurity that was sweeping down to cover the land. God had to have known what they were planning. It was like Egypt all over again, like it said in the Bible about the plagues. The hand of the Almighty was in this, come to kill all the first-born children, come to kill him, in punishment for what they were going to do. It weren't right, he knew it, and he had tried to tell himself that he wasn't going to be the one who did it. But that wouldn't wash, because, he was going to know who done it, and he wasn't going to do nothin about it.

When confronted with the natural order of the foggy and misty moisture, the first sign of an ending summer to the first coming of autumn. A young mind, drunk on guilt, only saw the grim and phantasmal plutonian hand of a greater power at work in the night. And it was that he nearly froze in terror in this swell of nerve flaying anxiety when he turned toward the hazy covered forest. Whether it was in his mind, or in some great triggering of an ancient power infused to the very ground they stood upon, he saw what he saw in his rush of guilt, shame, and the most potent of fear.

From the thin sheet of cirrus's blanket, the moon glowed in half-light. And from its fettered power, golden light fell drizzled upon the moistened leaves and branches of the fresh washed trees below. In doing so, the darkness of the foggy haze just receded where the light was unrestrained by branch and remained pitch where ancient trees canopied. In doing so, a great and tall silhouette was cast within the wall of fog which resembled a towering figure that took the shape of one young worker's guilt and fear's greatest conjuring.

Mouth agape, eyes wide as silver dollars, the young man stood alone in the grass. In sight was this great beast that was drawn to a grave sickness within all party to the night's foulest of planned deed. It surely had come for them, as he knew it would. It had come to lay ruin to everything that they held dear, following only its nature. The blame cast completely, and justly, with those who had beckoned it with dastardly actions and dark convictions. He felt like a citizen of Aethiopia, standing on the rocks of the break line in sight of the titanic sea monster Cetus. Then, like now, the destruction of a kingdom, a great city, coming from a prideful queen too enamored with her beautiful daughter. He heard it again, the noise, as he shakily lifted his shotgun to aim at the great mythological beast within the forest. His mind rushed in sudden confusion as he felt as if the shadows to his right were moving, over taking him rapidly. He only turned his head a moment …

THWACK!

Charlie Drake was taken off his feet by a powerful upper cut that came from a force like a freight train. He landed with the crunch of wet grass and soaking squish of water. He had been taken unawares by a figure who had sprang from the shadows after having slipped by him twice and watched him for a long time. A boot kicked the boy's body over on his back, before he drowned in the puddle created from his weight upon the soaked turf. But it was no use. Drake was completely unconscious from the shattering of his glass jaw which was badly burned in chaffing on the impact point.

Just then the light of the moon broke free as the vanguard of the mist began to sweep over boot and knocked out plant worker's body. From the shadows of the night's last golden light there was revealed a young man. He had grown out waving raven curls, a mahogany colored peacoat of beaten leather, black trousers, and tall boots of supple leather. The knuckles of both his hands were wrapped in sailor's roughspun rope, which gave his punches an added punishment. The figure in the light was clearly geared for a street fight. His eyes were intense and sharp as the predator looked upon the night's first victim. He spared a moment to frown in the direction of the forest to spy what his opponent was frightened by.

But there was nothing there.

Turning back, satisfied that the crumpled figure was truly down for the count, he hooked his boot under the fallen shotgun. With a kick, he popped the weapon straight up and caught it. The gun made a clink when he dismantled the barrel from stock. They disappeared into the fog when he threw them in opposite directions. After a long moment, the dark figure slid his dangerous glare over to Stone Barn as he was overtaken by the black fog.

To those inside the old store house, what was right and what was wrong seemed superfluous to the question of survival in times such as these. In the old days it was easier. There was a simple honor in the way they lived. If a man did wrong, he admitted it, did his time, and moved on. But that was when there was a balance to the land, when their ecosystem was regimented and symbiotic. But now, after the war, it seemed that it was every man for himself, and damned be those behind and in front of you.

They should've seen it coming, truly. But they were all so damn high and mighty, thinking they were going up in the world. All that talk of moving away, getting a job in the city with a wage in the shop or a factory. Who needed the Lords and their large estates? And for a while, they all believed it, because, it had been true. There was money everywhere if you knew where to look for it. The world was changing and it was best to get on with it now, before all the good spots were taken up. But in their rush to get out of the past, they had left behind something elemental, something within their upbringing that they all took for granted. In truth, they really didn't even know they had left it behind till it was too late.

It was hubris that robbed them of the healthy fear of the future. For that first decade they all talked it silly, thinking their time had come. But the awful truth was that the future was a fickle mistress, and she might take you into her warm embrace and cast you out to the cold in the same breath. No one thought that this Depression would ever come. That it was possible that they, as a society, could outrun their legs and their wits. A lot of the blokes down at the pub and the food centers thought it were a trap. The toffs had lured them away, just to snatch 'it' up from them, send them back to the way things were. But after a while, the honest man would admit that he'd like nothing better than to go back to the Abbey, to Skelton Park, and all the old places to mow the yards, tend the gardens, and wait a table at a dinner party. But there within lied the cruelest joke of all.

No one ever told them, all those years ago, that in the future, they didn't need working men at all.

All those places who once turned willing men away due to their lack of experience, now wouldn't take an experienced man. All the time throwing back in their rutting faces their own words when they left these places with a skip in their step. The days of footmen and maids, hall boys, and game keepers were at an end. But now even the modern work didn't need them anymore. It was all automated, all machinery, powered by electricity. There was no call for a man to work the wheels, to dump fuel in fires, or to do any of the dirty things that men made livings in for near a century.

They couldn't even go back to the farms where they were born. The more enterprising Estates had taken them over, farming them themselves with workers that weren't going to give up their places, especially to those who thought they were too good to work for 'the family' anymore. It seemed just yesterday that the future was bright. Now, they all hankered for yesterday when they paid rents to His Lordship, worked hard for little, but took pride in what they had. Now, in the pursuit of the modern world, they found that they had little to offer the greener of the pastures that were shut to them.

It was no longer a question of desperation, but a losing battle to despair that fed their actions. There was no farm to go back to, no Estate to employ them, and no call for their skill. What was a man to do? What could a man do in times such as these? He could make a bloody stand … at least that was what they had wanted to do. They had wanted to send a message to that pretty little thing at the Abbey in her silks and pearls. They wanted to send a message to the county, to the whole damn world, that they were still here. They wanted them to know that they had been here, that they were real Yorkshiremen.

But this was not what they had in mind, this was not what they planned, and this was not how they wanted to be remembered.

They were a collection of desperate and fearful faces that stood around a lone figure hanging from a pulley hook inside the warehouse. A deep and gruesome cut above a mostly bald man's forehead had scabbed ugly as he weakly looked to and fro at his captors. The rotund old man's arms were completely numb, tied to a hook that dangled him a foot off the ground. His blue uniform was soiled with mud and soaked with water runoff. He coughed raggedly into his gag, his head burning with fever. He had a constant shower of water from the sunroof where more dangling chains, meant for hauling hay, hung. Sergeant Willis had no clue how long he had been here. And in his growing sickness, he was beginning to lose track of where he was all together. He might have been unconscious already if it wasn't for the intense voices all around him, and the gun that kept being passed and grabbed from hand to hand.

He felt more disappointed than afraid for his life. There was a certain amount of failure that he felt deep within at the faces he saw. Most of them were young lads - too young for this sort of thing. There was the Drewe's oldest boy, The MacAndrew's youngest, and Mrs. Elkith's only child. Of that, he really did mourn. The boy's ole'dad killed serving King and Country with Captain Crawley on the Somme. He was all his mother has now, and this was what he had been doing with his life. Yet, there he was with Larry "Porky" Franklin, of all people. He had known the old boy all of their life. Not a stronger man in the world, that one. He had spent his entire life turning wheels, when he hadn't killed his share of Turks at Gallipoli, and a few more in Palestine, before they caught him. He spent two years in a Turkish Prison before they set him free when they turned Constantinople over to the Allies. He had never been the same ever since, and maybe he never would be. In such a drained and helpless position, the old policeman could only hope that it was old Porky who does him in, not the boys … he couldn't bare it for it to be one of the boys. Not the lads who used to chase after his bicycle, who he always snuck a coin or two for Ice cream.

It wouldn't be right for it to be the boys.

"We don't have to do this!"

"Of course, we have too, what else is there to do?!"

"We can … we can ask for ransom!"

"Don't be soft, they'll find out!"

"We can just leave'em here, send a note to the inspector!"

"Wha' are you, then? He's gonna rat us out about being the ones trying to ruin 'The Princess's' damned contraption first chance he gets, ya cracked beggar!"

"We got to shoot'em, burry him in the back where The Cap'n ain't never gonna find him!"

"But Pete …"

"Don't "But Pete" me, Porky's right … we gotta be men about this!"

"It's Willis, ain't it?"

"Yeah?"

"It's just … it's just, its Willis ain't it?"

"STOP CRYING!"

The oldest among them finally spoke, his voice booming. His nickname did him no justice, for there wasn't an ounce of fat on him. He had a shock of premature white hair that was messy and dampened in the raining evening. He had a pair of patched and threadbare brown slacks, and a stained white collarless long sleeve. His face, at the tender age of forty-five, looked as one of an old man. He had two great scars across it as if had been mauled by a large animal. And upon his cheek was a brand of some kind given by a Turkish Warden. He was slight and sinewy, a living and breathing muscle. His eyes were hard and had no softness in them. This was a man of the dark places, the hot places, all sweat and muscle. If there was something that needed going through the day, pumping through the dawn, it could be found in this man's arms. He was the unseen engine of everything that made the County of Grantham run in the days before and, certainly, after the war. They said that he was a machine himself, no warmth, no compassion, and no passion. He ate, slept, drank, and turned the wheels without feeling. But when the world turned against him, when the modern future didn't need him anymore, what was he to do?

"The choice is yours!" His voice was pure iron. "Do you wanna go home, or to the noose?" He asked. "It's up to you, but the choice gets made, by dawn!" He snapped.

The three youths, some just barely out of their teens, one a boy of fourteen, they all looked to the gun in hand.

It was the boy of nineteen with tears in his eyes. Elkith just didn't have it in him. He was haunted by his mother, by the things she said to him as she ailed in her bed. When he told her that he had lost his place at the Power Plant, she only smiled. She told him that it was okay, that now he could spend more time with her. When he couldn't afford the medicine anymore from the Royal York Hospital scheme, she told him that she felt fine. Her dying words had been that he was such a good boy, like his father. This whole time he had been the one advocating for the killing of Sergeant Willis. But when the gun came to him, his mother's words and his daily visits to his father's grave halted his outstretched hand.

It was easier when it was "Tyger Watch" - the private mercenary company that Lady Mary had hired during the "Civil War" to fight off Captain George's rebel army. They were strangers, foreigners, all Black Indians, Burmese, and Hong Kong Colonials. He thought serving with the Cap'n, fighting at "The White Fields" and storming Downton Town made him tougher, made him a man. He had killed them 'private soldiers' on the battlefield - all shaved heads, grey uniforms, and black berets. During the final assault on "The Sunken Road" in the 'Haunted Forest', he ran through one of their white officers with a bayonet. He smashed open the head of a tiny Chinamen with the butt of his rifle when he followed the Cap'n over the top and down in the Tyger's earthworks that afternoon. He thought killing would be easier now. But, he found, instead, it was easier to kill 'the other' so indiscriminately. He could look at an Indian, a Chinaman, even their southern officers … because, they weren't like him. But now that it came to this, when it was a man that he knew his entire life, the youth found it just wasn't in him - rebel soldier or not.

MacAndrews just wanted to make his papa proud again. In all of his fourteen years, he had never seen his father cry. But that night, when he came home, telling his mammy that he had been laid off from the Power Plant, she hit him with a pan. She called him good for nothing, said that she let him touch her, let him ruin her stage career in Paris. That she let him take her to this strange land, so that he could leave her destitute. He cried and begged for her to not leave him, but she swore she'd rather be a whore on her home streets, than a beggar in his bed. They hadn't seen her since. Now, all he does, day after day, is sit idly as their cottage falls to pieces. MacAndrews only wanted to do something; the boy only wanted to show them all that they couldn't just do what they want. The poshy Grantham's with their pretty girls and modern machines couldn't just break a good man who had fought for King and Country, who had answered the call and helped free the county from the Tygers by Cap'n George's side. But the young boy just shook his head at sight of the gun. Every day he sat in Mr. Moseley's class and looked out the window to see Sergeant Willis making his rounds on the bicycle, never once thinking that someday it would be him that would be asked to kill this fixture of his life.

But in the end, it was Peter Drewe that took the gun from MacAndrews. He had his mother's look and his father's world-weary eyes. He really couldn't point to a moment, in general, in which he chose to join this failed venture. There was plenty to choose from, and yet, his father would say that none of them were an excuse. It was true that Mr. Drewe had been the foreman at the Power Plant, that Lord Grantham had put him there. Not, because, he had experience, but, because, the men respected him.

Even Captain George, himself, purposefully worked under his father when he moonlighted at the plant from time to time, completely out of respect for a man who was his First Sergeant and held to his side during the thickest of the fighting at "White Field". Yet, when Mr. Drewe got laid off, they no longer needing his division due to Ms. Sybil's new contraption, there was barely anything spoken about it from his parents. In truth, his parents never really spoke anymore. His mother was distant and quiet most days, the only interest she showed to anything was her possessive nature toward her children. She was broken, and there was no fixing her. But if he could point to why he was here, well …

It was Marigold, really.

That was why he was doing this. It began and ended with Marigold Crawley. She was why he did it, why he would do this vile thing when no one else would. Out of all the people in this barn, it was never about the Power Plant to Peter Drewe. It was about the most beautiful girl that he had ever set eyes on, and how she broke his family. He didn't know if he hated her, or if he loved her too much, like his mama. All he knew was that it was the Crawleys fault, and someone had to pay for the theft of a little girl that destroyed his world.

It was just too bad that it had to be good old Willis.

" _Not … not the boy … nah, nah them, Porky …"_

As the dark-haired young man approached, revolver in hand, the old policeman shook his head in weak protest. His words were slurred as he turned toward the older man of the group who stood off to the side. Willis had seen him grow up, seen him running around Yew Tree with his sister and younger brother. He could still see old Mr. Drewe come bounding into the "Grantham Arms" the day little Peter was born, exclaiming that he had a Grandson. He remembered Nurse Crawley and Mr. Branson - the chauffeur for Downton Abbey then - buying the pub a round in celebration. He remembered the pride in that old man's face as he showed Lady Sybil and Mr. Branson the picture that Margie Drewe sent from her parent's house in Ulster, cherishing it as if it was the babe himself. After all that, it couldn't, it just couldn't be little Peter Drewe who does him in.

"It's the lads who come up with it, Willy. Thus, it done has to be the lads who go through with it …" There was no compromise in the older man's voice as he watched.

The boy was shaking, even with a still face. He had heard his father's old war stories of fighting the Germans and their tribesmen allies in East Africa. And there wasn't a bloke in Downton, or the county, who didn't talk about "The War" or "The Civil War" one way or the other. But none of them ever seemed to talk about the killing of it. He couldn't think of any time in his life in which he asked or was told what it was to kill another man. It occurred to him that it just wasn't a part of his family life.

His father fought in two wars, but all he really remembered was how desperate he was to get back to Peter's mother, to him. It seemed to be the only thing that was ringing clearly in his head. It was a strange desperation to go back home, to be washed of this mistake they've made. But the question loomed of if he pulled this trigger, would he ever be able to go home again? Or if he didn't, would he live to see his parents watch them fit the noose around his neck? It seemed the entire universe hung on if he could pull the trigger.

But it was a question that was never answered.

Suddenly, a shadowy figure leapt through the broken sunroof, catching one of the chains on the way down. He swung with a gliding arc, letting go at the right moment. A boot landed squarely on the back of the older man's head, his other knee ramming the space of Franklin's upper back between shoulder blades. He knocked Porky off his feet, planting the wheel turner's face into the floor of old Stone Barn. He rode him like a surfing board, the momentum from his fall dragging the wheel turner deeply through sod. When they finally came to a stop, the youth punched Porky in the back of the head, ensuring that he swallowed his mouthful of muck. The newcomer leapt off their ringleader's back and drew himself to full height in an alpha's presence, facing the other shocked young men.

There was a pause as a new rain began to patter through the misty wall that encased and isolated the stone barn from the rest of the world. They didn't have to see his face to know who he was, not with that type of entrance which was as far from North Yorkshire as it got. But if he found them, it meant that time was up, and there was no hope. For a pause, as the new arrival tensed readily, there was a moment in which it was clear that he was giving them one, and only one, silent warning to surrender …

It was ignored.

* * *

It was an all hands-on deck emergency.

The Grantham dinner table was awash with talk about what should and could be done about the most distressing issue. It was a consensus among all in the family that they must get ahead of the crisis. Long forgotten had been the main reason for why this trouble had plagued them. They only knew that they had dark tidings on the horizon if this 'business' drew out any further. In truth they were no new participants in these types of issues. Far from it. But it just seemed that they had more at stake now than they had before. There were children to think of, fathers and mothers, brothers, loyal servants, and friends. They all felt so incredibly stretched at the prospects of the multiple cases brought up against them all at once.

When they were younger it was Bates, than Tom and Sybil, then Baxter, and finally Anna. But at least they came in waves, one after the other, never at once. They suspected that was done on purpose. It was an attempted attrition in order to get someone to squeal. In the end, some would hate to give it up, but George had been right. He often cautioned his Donk on issues with the Estate. He would never give the British Government an excuse to look into any operation, especially His Majesties Prosecutors. They found evidence when it was convenient … even if they had to make it up. And they got most of their prosecutions on 'perjury traps' rather than actual evidence. If the Imperium wanted you, they'd find a way to get you.

They had all found their heir's anti-government beliefs quite cynical, the product of someone who had seen too many Southern American and Mexican trials where the man with the darkest skin was the guilty party … whether he did it or not. But George only ever scoffed at their defensiveness of British Law, saying that "Power is Power" and all it takes was the most pedestrian of humans to abuse it. But now that they were, for the first time, in the crosshairs of a figure in authority that was so clearly abusing it, they saw the universal truth that George lived his life and shaped his politics by.

The Inspector had wanted to squeeze them so tight. Whether it was Mr. And Mrs. Bates, Mrs. Baxter, or Tom, he figured that someone knew something. After a week he was somehow convinced that there was a conspiracy that was going on among the defeated faction who supported Mary in the war. And he figured that the "Toffs of the town" were getting their marching orders from Downton Abbey. The most infuriating thing was that he knew that Tom, Anna, Bates, and Mrs. Baxter had nothing to do with it. He was only going after them to get to Lady Mary.

He had been so sure that she was the guilty one.

How unfair it was, no one could say. But still was Lady Mary saddled with the moniker of being a secret Nazi. Having almost married one of their spymasters, and nearly allowing the German War Machine to invest in her Estate had reflected poorly upon her. But worse of all had been known that during the second day of fighting in the Civil War at "The Battle of Grantham Hill" that The Tyger Watch had been commanded by the military attaché of her Nazi diplomatic wedding guests. Of these many things done would there be an irredeemable stain that would never truly wash out, and forever haunt Lady Mary Crawley's reputation to the county and her own family.

Thus, it was that by the end of the summer of 1936 there were many people who loved Lady Mary Crawley … but there were very few that actually trusted her. Ever had the muttering of her connections to Nazi enthusiasts and sympathizers, placed cross hairs on her from many in her own country. And though, Lady Mary's supposed or false connections to the Nazi party, as well as her friendships with prominent members of the British Union of Fascists, was not on trial, it was the custom of the county to pin much of the ills on the woman. Many had not forgotten nor forgiven her six-year reign of terror upon Grantham County. Her Tyrannical and iron fisted rule, as well as her policy to relieve the burden on the Estate through raising the county taxes to impossible levels was done evilly in the view of many. Of this and many other things had there been placed a rather large target on the elegantly beautiful woman's back by most in the county.

And it is said that the only time that Captain George Crawley let his men down was when he spared Lady Mary's life and took her as his captive, rather than let his men lynch her from the old tree by the bench in front of Downton Abbey.

Yet, in spite all of this, her behavior and attitudes had not helped her cause with the county nor the police. Ever had she defiantly indulged her snobbish and effete personality toward everyone equally, doubling down to spite her son's iron handed ruling of her as his 'personal slave' - as she saw their relationship. Her grand assumptions of self-worth as the Countess of Grantham in every way but title, and her lack of consideration toward the lower classes, did not translate well in interrogations and interviews. Her ingrained high-class personality of excess and confident beauty caused her to never see the point in guarding nor checking her tongue. Thus, her rancorous and waspish words of exasperations and annoyance to the perceived trivialness of policemen and the Inspector cut deeper than a broadsword and stabbed quicker than a rapier.

By the end, it seemed that their combined deep loathing for Lady Mary Crawley was something that Captain George Crawley, Lord of Downton, could and had marshalled an army around.

However, in the meantime, they were stuck with the issue of what to do. Lady Rosamund, along with Lady Edith, and Laura Edmonds had come from London to be with the family in such a trying time. The Inspector's threats had become a looming cloud over everything in the Crawley family's lives, even from as far as London. Everyone had come to lend support to not only Tom, but the senior staff as well. Rosamund, in particular, had come with her niece and her charming best friend on the morning train to Downton with the sole purpose of bucking up a terribly worried Marigold.

It had been sometime since Edith's terribly vicious and ugly falling out with Mirada Pelham after what she did to the girls. And in that time Lady Rosamund had become more than happy to fill in the shoes as the other grandmother in young Marigold's life. Fore, late in age, did the older woman find a much grander purpose in the cherishing and guiding of the young and loving ballerina that filled her lonely heart. Over the years, she had become desperately close to her 'granddaughter' who returned her love deeply, holding her as close in her heart as she did Cora. And Lady Painswick couldn't bring to words how hearing that lovely young girl call her 'Grandmamma' with the deepest of sincerity made her feel. She could only wipe her eyes discreetly, trading a smile with a knowing Cora and Robert, who were happy to share such a beautiful feeling that was being a grandparent.

As for Ms. Edmunds, who had been adopted by the family since her sisterly bond to Edith was cemented thoroughly, she had come to aid her long-suffering friend, Tom Branson. And ever had it been the secret torment of Ms. Edmunds that she waited for so long to ask Tom out on a date. Fore, by the time she found the courage, had his hand and heart been solely in the grip of the kind-hearted Lucy Smith. Yet, despite such regrets, Ms. Edmunds was the first to announce that she and Edith could lend to them the aid of "The Sketch's" legal team. Edith followed up by assuring that her publishing lawyers must know some very good attorneys in London. Both career women were determined to handle Tom's case. Edith claiming that she could never start repaying the love and fatherly care that Tom had shown Marigold since Bertie had been in a Coma these last four years. Marigold seconded her mamma's thoughts, telling him openly that she loved him very much. Yet, trying hard to keep his emotions in check as his wife rubbed his arm with a glassy look, Tom announced that they were all very kind, but Anna and Bates, as well as Mrs. Baxter, needed their help more than he did. All he could ask for was forgiveness for the folly of his youthful and irresponsible political violence, especially when he should've put Sybbie and Sybil first.

He only had himself to blame for these current woes he thrust upon them all.

But Lady Mary would not hear a word more of his 'personal responsibility nonsense', chastising that he was starting to sound rather like George. She claimed that Lord Grantham could always be prevailed to go to the Home Office if need be. And if the Home Office did not work, then she was so sure that there was 'several old guns' at his club that could help. To this, Lord Grantham raised everyone's spirits momentarily with chuckles, claiming that there was nothing left to discuss now that he had, apparently, received his marching orders.

Atticus had pointed out that he knew the Inspector's rabbi. His late father had helped raise money for his synagogue when the younger Lord Sinderby was still at Cambridge. He pondered if there was some way that the rabbi could prevail on the man's better nature. Lady Rose also reminded her family that Shrimpie, her father – now fully recovered from his wounding at "The Battle of White fields" – was one call away. Even though he worked for the Foreign Office, he still had connections with agencies that could look into these types of police abuses.

But for Lady Mary, she was convinced that, in the end, nothing would come of it. They were all innocent, and that was all that mattered. But when Sybbie pressed her mamma about 'corruption not caring about the innocent or guilty', not forgetting their many years in Buckingham Palace under "Royal Obligation". But to that point, her mamma only assured the girl that, because, of that time in the Royal Court the both 'knew too many people, darling', for such a little man to do anything of note to those under powerful protection. To this an annoyed Edith followed up by reporting in sarcasm that their beloved Sybbie could go on a killing rampage and get nothing but a slap on the wrist if 'Queen Mary' so wished it. Her eldest sister only swirled her wine arrogantly, chastising Edith for being jealous.

But just as Mr. Ellis was supervising the serving of the pudding, Mr. Barrow walked into the dining room and sidled up to Lord Grantham.

"My God … are you sure …?"

"He's just downstairs, Your Lordship."

Everyone watched in confusion as to what was going on. But their interest peaked as Robert Crawley threw his napkin on the table. Immediately, he requested both Barrow and Ellis, as well as Tom and Atticus to follow at once. Lady Grantham called out to her husband, but the old man only walked out of the room in a rush. After a long moment of everyone looking to everyone else for an answer that no one had, they all got up as well. Soon the entire dinner party was afoot, moving into the great hall, toward the staircase door to the downstairs. It was Mr. Ellis who informed Lady Grantham of what was going on below stairs. When she heard, she walked quicker to match her husband who was eager to get down the stairs.

"Damn him!"

The Inspector was a tall and lanky man of peak age for his trade. He wore glasses that heightened the contrast of bright blue eyes in their lenses. A close crop of tight coal black curls topped his smaller head. All of which made his Jewish heritage almost obvious. And, if not, then he was known for his distinctive blue suits and bow ties which would certainly give the game away. However, when it came to his ability to carry himself, everything about this man spoke to a great chip on his shoulder.

Activism was something he wore on his sleeve. The Inspector had ever been an advocate for the better treatment of his people, and, if not for their better treatment, than he had been there for their protection. But of late he had grown rather angrier than usual at the situation. He claimed that it came from the assertions of the "un-English" practices of his people. In the past it was reflex for a Jew to pay double for an item in order to shake the stereotype that they were stingy. But now, deep into this Depression, it looked boastful. The man was said to have a point about there not being a winning side for them. They paid too little - they were cheap, but if the same Jew paid too much - it must have meant that he was profiting off Anglo misfortune in the Imperium. These double standards made the Inspector seem to see conspiracy everywhere, at all times.

They were all ungrateful and unfortunate gentiles out to get him … get his people.

But what needled him more was his own unpopularity with the Jewish community. For all of his activism in a place of true power, were a difference could be made, the elders thought him too hard, too tough. They didn't want to make a fuss, didn't want to get on people's radars. 'The best revenge is living well' they had told him. But that was old men talk. That was old country talk. He resented his rabbi and the old Lord Sinderby chastising him for attending such unhelpful meetings with the Communists. They told him that he was a man of great respect in the community, someone that the boys could look up too. So why throw it all away for these dangerous Leftist meetings?

But that was what they didn't understand, with their adopted English names and ways. The whole world was locked in a power struggle between the classes. How could the Jewish people ever be safe if they cowed and bowed to every prejudice in society? Even the Jews in New York had their own mafia, their own connections that protected their neighborhoods. Yet, in England, the Jews were still hiding, still trying to play the Gentry's rigged game. Men like the Elders and the Sinderby's were the past. Marxism was the future, the power of the people to rise up. They wouldn't take the half-measures that Hitler and Mussolini had, stopping the revolution only at Socialism and Fascism. They would crush the Nazi and Black Shirts under the boot of the full left turn of the people rising up against the privileged of British High Society.

However, these ideals, his passions, weren't what the Jews, his people, wanted for this country. And as such, tired of his sermons, they had all turned their backs on him as the future of their community. To that he grew angrier ever since. His dejection had turned and bloodied the waters of his mind into a dark and feral hate for those he spoke out against. He was forced to watch them all turn away from his ideals and passions, only, to instead, embrace gentiles as their champions.

They now looked to Winston Churchill; a disgraced politician whose anti-Nazi radio programs had become a fixture in every Jewish household. They turned to Captain George Crawley, a known Vigilante, Republican, and Catholic, who openly supported Zion in the Mid-East and the Jewish people. They followed the lead of Atticus Aldridge, Lord of Sinderby. He was a man who had married a titled 'Shiksa' and had been pining for her every day since their separation after her disgrace in New York. All it took was someone with a title and strong English roots to claim to be a supporter of the Jews, and they all flocked to them, rather than the Inspector and his radical views.

Capitalism was how his people gained their wealth, how they held it, and what had given them position in this country. Thus, they'd flock to figures that defended these capitalistic and anti-government values. But why pursue wealth, when they could have power? They say that they want a nice and peaceful life, but in this century, the Inspector knew that only their domination over the Anglos and Saxons would ensure their survival. Not this far off dream of "Israel" carved out of Mandatory Palestine at the authority and permission of the British Empire. The Imperium that openly spoke against the Zionist Liberals like Churchill and 'The Comet' Crawley.

The Inspector's prejudice to the hold out oppressors of the Grantham Estate was notwithstanding as he stood in the servant's hall of Downton Abbey. This was the very house of those of the upper class that wrote into law restrictions on his faith. It was the House of a young man who presumed to replace him as someone of admirable standing with his own people. Here at Downton ever had the Inspector felt so incredibly patronized at the very air he breathed in the Downstairs of the gothic castle. The truth was that unlike the Elders, the inspector didn't want nor need these 'Great Lords' help in standing up for his people. He refused to be their side project, something to gossip about at posh tables in their clubs and swanky homes in Belgravia.

"Can I get you something, sir?"

Mr. Bates stood forward, noticing the unrelenting gaze of unguarded dislike directed at his wife. Anna did everything in her power to ignore the prejudiced eye of a man that wanted to put her in jail - her and her husband. She didn't know if she wanted to strike him, scream at him, or runaway in terror, taking Johnny and Lily with her. Mrs. Hughes, who stood off to the side of half a dozen York policemen, gave Anna a nod of encouragement. Both women flickered their gaze in a discreet shifting of a distasteful glare at the tall and thin man who only sniffed at the professional attitude of Mr. Bates.

"I don't need to be pandered too."

"Only common courtesy, sir."

"I have no need of it …"

"Indeed, sir."

The man glared at the hobbled valet, who had the ghost of a smirk that he traded with his wife at the subtle jab. The Inspector showed little love to the Grantham's staff. They all, who worked tirelessly and loyally for this country's oppressors, were the worst. In the American South they'd call them "House Niggers" - hated and untrusted by the other Black slaves in the fields. He didn't know them, but he didn't have too. All of those in service were vipers of low cunning, paranoid and desperate to hold onto their places within the household. They were unqualified for 'real work', unlike the rest of the starving people in the cities. Some of them even thinking they were better than the rest of their fellow working class. A little girl playing with dolls could do their same job, and yet, because they bathed, cleaned up, and dressed spoiled men and women, they thought they were just as high as those they served. That somehow it gave them some sort of privilege to walk on the waifs begging for bread or pennies on the street.

In fact, the entirety of the English Countryside had always had the - rather pervasively intolerable - stench of privilege.

The sound of feet echoed from the dark staircase with shuffles that led down to the kitchens and the servant's hall. They watched as the outline of a group of people in evening gowns and tuxedos paced down the steps quickly. Lord Grantham seemed surprised to reach the foot of the servant's stairs and see the Inspector. Both men traded hateful glares, as Mr. Barrow ushered Robert forward toward the servant's hall. Each member of the Grantham family paused at some measure to look surprised or grudgingly at the lithe Policeman. But under their scrutiny the man had the same look on his face. A smug, but spiteful sneer as if he was whiffing the horrid stench of some sewage treatment plant. One could only imagine that his face equally represented his view of the Noble House of Grantham, and their very ancestral home. None the less, he followed them into the large open area where they gathered in shock and relief.

"Willis, my dear fellow!"

Lord Grantham's exclamation summed up all of his family's feelings upon seeing the figure. The girthy policeman looked distant and solemn, sitting by the fireplace. He was stripped of his uniform, sitting in a borrowed pair of undershorts and a tank top undershirt. His bare feet were in a bucket of warm water and he was wrapped in a blanket. On top of his balding head was a hot water bladder. The overjoyed voice of his Lordship caused the man to jump, as a rabbit in hearing of a snake's rattle. His nerves were flayed. He immediately tried to stand at attention from the entrance of the Marchioness of Hexham, The Earl of Grantham, and his Ladyship, but couldn't find the strength. Lady Grantham was quick to excuse him of the obligation seeing how bad off he was.

"Good God, what happened to you, man?" Tom asked upon seeing the gruesome head wound and superficial gash on his neck from where a blade had rested threateningly in a last-ditch effort of a losing fight.

"Yes, you look to, truly, have had the time of it …" Edith followed.

"Yes, well done, Edith …"

"Not now, Mary!"

"You see, Your Lord and Ladyships … I, uh, I …" The older man tried to sound as stalwart as his position expected him to be. "Well you see …" He cleared his throat. They all watched with fallen faces as the man of near sixty began to well with tears. "I, um …" He cleared his throat. But when he opened his mouth again, nothing came out of it. He shook his head, before he nodded. "I was in the power plant … and, uh, they … I mean someone …" He trailed off. He seemed to disbelieve what he knew was true.

"Someone hit you, old bean?" Sybbie finished for him with compassion.

The man seemed to react to the enchantingly lovely girl's presence. But it was anything but delighted. There was a conflict of great guilt, mixed with discomfort. One could say that it might have been that it seemed improper for such a young woman to see an old man in his shorts. But the truth was that it had, exclusively, to do with her inadvertent involvement in the events of his trauma. He was not a man quick to blame, nor to hold it over someone forever. Sergeant Willis had always possessed the unique gift of empathy in a job that most would soon lose over time. But a man he still was, and as a human he could not find the emotion to put to young Sybil Branson after the events of this night.

"Yes, someone …" He drew off toward the fire.

"Grantham …" The Inspector made himself known. Never, not once, or ever, would the man address the Earl with any title of respect. "It appears that Sergeant Willis has been ambushed …" He stated.

"Yes, for once we are in agreement, Inspector." Robert was stung by the terse use of his name as one used a colorful swear word.

The Jewish policeman nodded. "Then, I must ask if you know who has done it?" He placed his hands behind his back.

"Oh, not this again …!" Lady Mary sighed in exasperation. "You got your man back, did you not? Isn't that enough?" She spoke to the Inspector dismissively as if he was a tiresome advocate wearing a billboard asking for donations.

"No!"

The inspector nearly shouted at the pallid fashion queen. He quickly reigned in his hot emotions at the snobbish and demeaning attitude of the woman in a black satin mermaid gown. "No …" He repeated in cold tone. "For this case is far from over … a police officer has been beaten and kidnapped for near a week. The man is unable to speak of his captors. I say it is, because, he is afraid to do so in this house." He sneered.

"That is a ridiculous charge!" Tom challenged.

"Is it so far-fetched, Mr. Branson? From what I understand from your police file, you have very little respect for English authority." He questioned facetiously.

"I've made mistakes in my life … but I would never betray my daughter, my niece, nor my family by sinking back into the life my late wife saved me from!" The big Irishman gritted his teeth.

"I thought the days of the "buck" stopping at some random Irishman ended when Southern Ireland was given her independence?" Lady Edith added.

"Yes, surely you aren't blaming Tom for your short comings, Inspector?" Mary had snarked with a ruthless tear of the flesh of his pride.

"My short comings?" The man snarled.

"Yes, well, what do you call a Police Inspector who misplaces one of his men for near a week, as you say? Then sits on his hands, till he comes wandering back on his own? Yes, you're quite right, short comings is not the right word … I believe something a rather bit stronger is needed." Lady Mary was rancorous in her defense of her brother-in-law and best friend.

"Well, that is just it, Ms. Crawley …" The Inspector removed his glasses, spotting the aggravation on Mary's incensed face at his knowing that her title had been stripped of her when she became her son's captive. "Sergeant Willis didn't just walk into this servant's hall. He was brought here by someone who knows what happened!" He pointed toward Downton's senior staff. "At the direction of someone, if I'm not mistaken …" He turned back to the family. "Perhaps, it is someone who was worried for a brother-in-law about to be locked up in a Belfast Prison!" he took a step toward Mary in accusation.

"How dare you!" Lord Grantham snarled indignantly. "You come into my family's home, interrupt our dinner, just so you can insult my daughter and son, to throw around reckless accusations!" He was at the peak of his temper, his voice rising with every word. "Get out!" He pointed at the tall Jewish man. "Get out of my house!" He raged.

"Inspector …" Atticus strode from the back of the small group. His action was spurred by the frightened way that Marigold took ahold of Tom's hand, while Sybbie defiantly embraced her daddy's arm protectively. "Elijah …" he said with familiarity. "I don't see how any of this is going to help." He was stately and amenable, trying to act as a broker, a leader of the local Jewish community of Yorkshire.

"Of course, you wouldn't …" The Inspector cut at the man, looking him up and down. "I've forgotten that you are one of them now …" He pointed to Lord Grantham who was being restrained by his wife who was coaching him to slow down, her silk gloved hand touching his cheek. But her eyes were just as fiery when she heard her family and herself referred to as 'the other' in conversation.

"Sir, you do yourself dishonor!" Atticus said gravely, rankled by his tone and implied notions of Lady Rose.

"No, you do yourself dishonor!" The Inspector had enough. "There is something more going on here, and you know it, Ephraim!" He announced. "Someone beat one of my men, held him captive for a week, and now he is quite unable to speak of it! He shows up, magically, at Downton Abbey, as if nothing was a miss? No, sir, they're hiding something, they all are. They hide behind their grace and their manners, but in the end they're nothing but leeches, don't you see, leeches! All of them here in the countryside, doing their bidding, hoping not to end up like the starving masses in the cities! I see it, Ephraim, only I see it! A whole Kingdom, an entire Empire, ruled from the thrones of the Countryside!" He ranted bitterly and angrily. All sense of sanctity and reason had been given over to anger of what he believed to be the politics of the righteous.

"Elijah!" Atticus raised his voice. "Come to your senses, man!" He admonished. "Remember where and who you are, Inspector!" he spoke of his rank with poignancy.

"Sir …" One of the Sergeants looked rather uncomfortable as he walked up toward his supervising Inspector in a reasoning manner.

"Ah, Sergeant Wilkins! Sir, I dare say take them all in custody!" he pointed not to the family, but the entire Downstairs staff of Downton. Immediately Mr. Bates stood defensively in front of his wife, while Mrs. Hughes looked wide eyed and outraged. However, Mr. Barrow seemed undeterred. It was clear to many that he might be the most knowledgeable soul in the room about what was really going on. Mrs. Baxter looked worried, but more puzzled as to why Thomas only puffed out an impertinent cloud of smoke in the direction of the ranting man in response to his threat.

"Sir?" the smaller policeman with large sideburns frowned at the given order.

"You can't be serious?!" Mary exclaimed in shock, looking to Anna protectively.

"I'm done with these games, Ms. Crawley!" He announced. "Someone knows what happened here, and I'll get it out of them, one way or the other!" There was a purpose in his fierce eyes. "Officers, I said take those people in custody!" He ordered again to the very hesitant policemen who seemed unsure of it.

"I forbid you from taking my staff!" Robert strode forward in furious indignation. "I forbid it, you hear me!" He was held back by Cora and Rosamund.

"Then, Grantham, produce me with the person or persons who delivered Sergeant Willis!" When no one said a word, he turned and addressed the room. "Who brought this man here?!" He asked. "WHO BROUGHT THIS MAN HERE?!" He repeated himself at a roar in the undaunted face of a smug Mr. Barrow.

"I did."

The voice that spoke gave a startle to the room, especially to the ranting Inspector. Its origin came from right behind him, causing him to give a jump which undercut his authority in front of his men and, especially, those he wished to intimidate. Everyone in the room turned toward the back of the servant's hall, near the old piano. There, covered by shadows, they saw a lone figure leaning back, his arms crossed, and his leg drawn with a foot pressed back against the wall. No one but Thomas had seen him, or knew he was even there at all. What made the Inspector more nervous and chilled was that he had been standing near that spot for a good long time, all the while not knowing or noticing that someone was there, right behind him, the entire time.

No one had seen George Crawley in a month, not since his bitter falling out with Sybbie.

What was dismissed, at first, to be the usual tiff between the two, which was always solved in a few hours, turned out to be a deeper issue. In the meantime, George seemed to have little faith in his family's ability to take his side, especially after what had been done to a future Duke. But he would've been wrong. Fore, when Lord and Lady Grantham learned of the incident when the group of teens limped back from Crawley House, both Sybbie and Marigold were scorned for such unfathomably stupid behavior. Their grandparents couldn't understand what possessed their girls to take strange young men to a house that wasn't their own, and let them poke and prod at George's private things? The frightened and tossed about young men - of whom Robert had liked so much - got very little sympathy from Lord Grantham that night. Meanwhile, Lady Mary took it a step further. She announced to their faces that if young men who arrogantly swagger into her beloved Matthew's house and put their grubby little hands on her heir's things didn't deserve a good thrashing, then they must live on a different planet. But either way, George would not see his family, not even when Lady Grantham walked down to Crawley House to check on him.

"Oh, my darling …!"

Cora exclaimed in alarm when George stepped out of the shadows. The young man looked hardened and dangerous. But his family was taken aback by the deeply yellow and green bruise on his jaw and a very deep gash on his opposite cheekbone. He walked into the light favoring his right side where a wheel turner had cracked two of his ribs with a punch during a climactic knife fight. There was a shuffle to his steps as he approached. But what gave his family pause was a splash of drying blood that was on the side of his face. Immediately, out of some rusted maternal reflex, it was Lady Mary who reacted.

"You're bleeding …" Mary touched his arm. But he walked past her.

"Not my blood."

The Inspector regained some of his composure as he came face to face with the mighty George Crawley for the first time. He was a tall young man – taller than him by the middle of the next year. The boyish features on his face had been roughed away by hard times over eight years. He looked older and more mature than someone of sixteen years of age. They always said that he was a 'mad dog that could lead a pack', and the denizens of the county swore by him in pride. For the young Captain's deeds, of surpassing courage in his youth while defending Downton during the massacre, as well as eight years later during the "Civil War", were enshrined as legend in every rustic and rural cottage in Grantham County. And now he could see why. The youth had a warrior's look, some air of an Arthurian Knightly appearance. These were all helped by his fresh injuries and the splash of blood on his face. But his eyes told the story of someone who had seen too much too soon of the worst of humanity, in a world on its knees.

He also looked quite different than the usual Harrow and Eton chap of his generation. He wore his waving black curls longer than usual at shoulder length, mostly unkept. He was never seen in tuxedo, suit, or pull over sweater like the rest of the titled 'chaps'. He was in denim or black trousers all the time, tucked into old Mexican Federales boots. He usually wore a long sleeve Henley shirt either by itself or under a plain button down. And always about him was his peacoat of mahogany colored beaten leather. He was an odd young man that adopted a rather rugged appearance of a Cowboy and Adventurer. He spoke a dozen languages that were regional to places that the Inspector had never even heard of. He spoke a "Tex-Mex" Spanish, Cajun French, several dialects of Hindi, Cantonese "Street Speak", Irish Gaelic, and - to the police inspector's great annoyance - a flawless Hebrew.

From one look at him, he saw that he was dealing with a completely different creature than that of the rest of his family.

"You brought Sergeant Willis here?" He questioned.

"Are you deaf?"

The boy's tone had a frighteningly matching attitude to his mamma, though it was said with much less exasperation and much more no non-sense authority. "Stone Barn …" George flinched as he poked his gash, to make sure it had stopped bleeding. "On the border of The Estate and Yew Tree Farm." He turned to the officers, icing out the Inspector from the proceedings. "You'll find what you need, Sergeant." He nodded to the lead man standing just behind the investigator.

"Cap'n …" The uniformed policeman stood at attention with his helmet under his arm, a reminder of his time in the rebel army the boy led.

The Inspector looked as if he had been stabbed in the back when he heard the clicking of heels. He immediately turned to the sergeant who did give pause thoughtfully. Protocol was in a grey area when it came to what to do. George Crawley had "Double O" status when it came to Law and Order in Grantham County. But since it was a distinction which was brand new to the British Government, they all just assumed that Captain George Crawley, Lord of Downton, was ahead in ranking.

But then there was a possibility that one's jurisdiction was only of certain matters pertaining to espionage, as the whole position was created with the express purpose of cleaning out Nazi and SPECTRE agents from Downton Abbey with a "License to Kill". But they weren't sure if that also extended to local criminal matters as well. It was all confused. But the one thing that burned the Inspector ever the more was that George Crawley instantly commanded the respect that the tall policeman still couldn't earn ten years on the York Police Force.

"What the bloody hell do you think …" He began.

"The matter has been concluded, Inspector." George turned to leave. "I suggest that you pack up and go home …" He placed his hands in his jacket pockets. "We've all done enough damage for one lifetime." There was a deep regret in his voice of the events of the night.

"I insist …"

"Good night, Inspector!" The youth had a deeply simmering anger that could be felt as he cut the man off once more.

"I say, stop right there!" The Inspector pursued George a step or two. When the young man did as he was bid, the policeman ground his teeth angrily when he refused to face him. "As I repeat, sir, a police officer has been assaulted and taken captive. This is not a light matter to be brushed off. Now, you will tell me the name of the cohorts and schemers of this plot, and you will give over to me the criminals who committed this act, and you will do so now!" He demanded.

"Criminals?" The word sounded foreign to the young man when he spoke it, staring at the far wall of the Downton servant's hall.

"Yes, sir, I say, criminals!"

"No …" The young man challenged shortly. "They weren't criminals." He turned his head to a side profile in the half light of the late-night atmosphere of Downton's downstairs. "I've known criminals, Sir. I've been locked in amongst them in the darkest and foulest of godless places that you could never dream of. I've heard them scream of the nightmares that plague them of the very horrors they've committed. And I've smelt the excrement of those who lost their minds somewhere in the endless darkness. I've seen them in the shadows of their cages, pleasuring themselves to memories of their victims screams. I've fought and killed these animals in the darkness of Satan's basement …" George let just a hint of his time in a Mexican Criminal Asylum spill out before he audibly stopped himself from saying more about it. After a pause, he let the memories pass like a midnight train.

"No, sir …" He said quietly, staring deeply into the dark of the hall. "The people responsible for this weren't criminals." He corrected. "Not by a long-shot." He turned to face the man. "They had families, homes, mothers, and fathers. They had friends, they had dignity, and pride … and it was stolen out from under them by the very arrogant sons of bitches standing in this room!" George ranted. There was guilt eaten madness in his eyes that were lit dangerously.

It seemed to be the final argument in a debate that started months ago in a Ripon board room, and now ended in blood.

"They were Peter Drewe, David Elkith, Charlie Drake, Guy MacAndrews, and Lawrence Franklin! And they may have made a mistake, they may have done the wrong thing, but I will not allow you to drag their family's names through the mud to satisfy your vanity!" George gave a tight shake of a clenched fist at the man, his eyes shining brightly with fierceness. "But by God, I will not let you, or anyone else in this room, take their names from them as well, especially not you!" The anger that was simmering seemed to turn into something much worse, feral, with the dark deeds of the night still in his very blood.

Lord Grantham had to steady himself, holding his heart. He knew who each and every one of those boys' names. Without David Elkins visiting his father's grave, they would never have been able to convince Carson to put the War Memorial in the center of the village. Charlie Drake's father, John, was the first patient that Isobel had cured in the village. He even remembered allowing Edith to help him for a time during the war. He remained a loyal tenant till they took Longfield Farm in hand after his death. As a consolation, Robert put Charlie to work at the Power Plant. Every time he passed young Drake, lunch pail and insulated gloves in hand, he always thanked him. He used to say that "His Lordship put lightning in me blood, now I hear it's callin wherever I go." He had awarded Mr. MacAndrews several medals when he had served as Matthew's Sergeant Major during the final stretch of the war. He always said that his greatest reward was his beautiful 'Lily of France' who followed him home. And then there was Peter Drewe … What could he say about the Drewes that he hadn't after all they had done for Edith and Marigold?

Now they were …

"And where are they now?" The Inspector demanded.

There was a long pause from a young man whose mind flashed darkly. "Stone Barn, right where I left them ..." He suddenly went passive, all the anger and passion drained away in sudden haunted – haunted - eyes.

They had been his men. Some of them had made the long march from the Standing Stones outside Inverness all the way to Grantham County, living off half rations through the bitter cold of the Scottish Highlands during Mid-Winter as they followed him on the obscure goat and cattle paths through the icy passages. They had gone on force marches through the snowy Scottish nights to stay ahead of the Royal Regiment sent to bar their passage south to Brancaster. They had very little sleep, so very little to eat, when they followed him into that bloody meandering fist fight on the "White fields" the week of Christmas. They had slammed head long into the Tyger Watch Corps at Longfield Farm, The Haunted Forest, The Sunken Road, Yew Tree Farm, "The Beehive", and Grantham Hill. They or their fathers did their part to help him free his mother and Sybbie from their violators and slavers, to take back his ancestral home. And they did it for little food, no pay, and too much blood. They did it, because, George "The Comet" Crawley asked it of them. And all of it for what in the end?

When George looked up, he simply gave the Sergeant in the back a nod.

"Of course, Cap'n." The man stuck his helmet once more to his side. He gave a curt acknowledgement which spoke to which side the officers had taken. With the final words spoken George moved to take his leave once more.

"This isn't New Orleans!" The Inspector snapped in the swirling outrage within him.

The comment stopped the young man dead in his tracks. For a long beat he stood with his back, once more, to the Inspector.

"What did you just say to me?" His voice took a gravelly quality, clearly triggered by the invoking of things, times, and struggles that the radicalized Jewish man couldn't fathom.

The words spoken by a man who had, so suddenly, felt alone, was angry and cutting. For a week he had felt the calling of power, true power. He had a Noble House, one of the last of the great old families, on the ropes. He could taste the social change that he had been trying to affect. But now, in a matter of one confrontation, he had lost it all to a young man not even of age. It weighed heavily on him. This was not the way of the world. This was not the law of the people. The boy was a vigilante, not an officer of the law. He was not allowed to walk away when he wanted or to undercut an investigation when he so wished.

"I said that this isn't New Orleans!" He pressed. "This isn't Hell's Kitchen in New York City, or the West Texas badlands, or the South Texas Valley, or the Mexican foothills. Those men you killed, they're not Klansmen, Voodoo Cultists, Mexican Banditos, loud mouth Negroes, nor Nazi Agents, not even Tyger Watch. Life might be cheap in America and Mexico, but it is not here in Yorkshire, sir! You cannot imagine that you can summarily pass sentence of death on strangers and criminals on your own whim!"

"They weren't criminals, and they weren't strangers!” George turned, coming face to face with the Inspector, squaring up to him. "And I didn't kill those men … you did!" he spat point blank.

"I beg your pardon!"

"You heard me …" He said dangerously low.

"I say, you unkempt cur! How dare …!"

**SKRREEK!**

"You killed them! You did!"

"George!"

"Hey! Hey!"

Suddenly, in an outburst of violence - the fight still hot in the blood of the young man who was pushed too far by a past thrown in his face - George reached out and snatched the Inspector by his collar. Everyone, immediately, let out shocked and surprised noises in calls of restraint. Meanwhile the youth manhandled the tall man onto the top of the long table of the servant's hall. Chairs screeched and toppled as the vice gripped teenager slammed the policeman onto the flat surface aggressively.

"You killed them!"

"Get that vampire's mongrel off me!"

In a flash Thomas Barrow, Lord Sinderby, Tom Branson sprang forward, as did several officers. They grabbed ahold of George's leather jacket, and the lapels of the Inspector's long coat. George's hand was pressing the side of the Jewish man's head against the tabletop with crushing force. While the Policeman was shoving his palm in complete defense against George's gashed cheek. Eventually, the overwhelming force of countless other people separated the two. The difference became that, while the Inspector cloaked himself behind his officers, George bucked against his Uncles' grips as they attempted to pull him back toward the rest of the Grantham family.

"You animal! How dare you, sir!" the taller man shouted in outrage, being restrained lightly by his officers.

"They made a mistake, you bastard! And they would've done a year at the most for tampering with Sybbie's machine! But instead you and your ego were kicking down goddamn doors in Town! They were so terrified that they were going to murder Willis, because, they thought that they didn't have a choice, because, you didn't _fucking_ give them one!"

"I was doing my duty as an officer of the law, you Goy Vigilante piece of shit!"

"They would still be alive if you would've given them a chance … Just a FUCKING CHANCE, you Marxist cocksucker!"

"George, leave it!"

Eventually, the wild young man was shoved back till he was pinned with an audible slam to the wall arch that led to Mrs. Hughes's sitting room. George tried to get free at the man who was cleaning his glasses with a deep streak of detest for the youth. But his rage was unfocused when it was, out of all people, Lord Grantham who grabbed his grandson by the lapel of his jacket in a disciplinary paternal manner.

"George, let it go!" Lord Grantham shouted in his face to get his attention.

There seemed to be no one in the world that was better qualified to handle the boy's black temper than the man who passed it down to him through his eldest child.

"Blast it, you damned fool! Enough! You're picking a fight with six armed men with actual training! Especially, when you're in no condition to fight anyone! Now, leave it … before you play exactly into that damnedable man's hands and give him a real reason to arrest you … isn't that right, Inspector?!" Robert questioned. The policeman only jammed his glasses back on his face, seething in his silence which wasn't a denial. "Right …" He glared when turning back to his adolescent grandson. "Now leave it, boy!" he shoved George back against the wall again before stepping away with authority toward the Inspector and the rest of the police.

"This matter is at an end! You have your names and their location, now get out of my home, and don't you dare come back!"

Somewhere in The Earl of Grantham's voice, was the Leftenant Colonel, The War Hero of South Africa who escaped Pretoria with Churchill, Bates, and their old friend Liam "MacDougall" Bond, Lord of Skyfall. The man who used that voice, who had that conviction, who Cora Levinson fell in love with, was to be respected. There was nothing left to be said of the matter. It was the worst ending to a nightmare scenario. It was a solution that no one, not even the Inspector, wanted out of this situation. But, while the officers were more than ready to follow His Lordship's directive to the letter, the investigator wasn't.

The man was frazzled and angry beyond reason. It just wasn't in him to let it go. He had been so sure that they had something to do with this. But now, not only had he visibly lost the respect of his men, but he would not get a chance to make an example of these arrogant puppet masters. For too long the Lords had run off to the countryside, ignoring the plight of the poor in the cities. Here, they could still play at being kings of the counties. If he could prove a case against them, he could hit the oppressors where they ate. Then they'd finally be afraid. If he could make them fear, make them bleed, it could jar loose the apathy of the common people of this country since the brutal end of the "'45". But now he was being sent home, his legs cut out from under him, by a vigilante. He just couldn't let it end like this. He couldn't accept that this was the conclusion of everything he worked for, a case he waited his entire career for.

"This isn't over …" He took his hat off, turning back to Mary. "Do you think that just because your mad dog cut some throats, that you've escaped?" There was something truly out of control in his eyes as he addressed the pale beauty. "Mr. and Mrs. Bates, Mr. Branson … all of them." He pointed to each one of those he named with conviction. "They're cases are still pending, they're on the books. Don't think for a second that I won't spend every waking moment making sure that they won't get away for a second time! I promise you that there won't be enough flimsy evidence in the world to make me go away!" it was a dark promise to his dark words.

There was a laser, red hot, focus that found Anna in this rant. "You'll see the noose, before the end, I promise you that!" The Inspector finished. "I'll be seeing one of you very soon." There was nothing but threat in his parting words to Lord Grantham, but in particular, Lady Mary who stood ever at Anna's side in some subconscious feeling of protectiveness. But as he made the first two steps toward the door, placing his bowler hat on, he made the biggest mistake of his life.

He had threatened the downstairs staff of Downton Abbey … with his back to the cage.

THWACK!

Robert Crawley, along with his son's-in-law had all retreated back toward the group after the police began to leave. In doing so, they had forgotten that they had left a young man alone. Something looked to have snapped in George Crawley's eyes, the moment he saw the Inspector single out Anna Bates with a bully's sadistic delight. The minute that the Inspector had turned to leave, George sprang forward. In a lightning motion, he had taken a Billy Club off a York Officer's belt.

With a powerful swing he cracked the Inspector on the back of his knee. The man let out a pained shout that was almost as loud as the sound of his joint snapping out of place. In that surprised aftermath, the only officer that didn't stand by and watch in shock, was shoved to the floor of the dark hallway that led to the Butler's office.

In a dark and hateful rage, George grabbed the tall and skinny man off the floor by his neck. He nearly lifted him off his feet, as the hazy eyed policeman gagged for help that hadn't come. Then, with a fling, George threw the man out of the servant's hall and into the kitchens. Mrs. Patmore and her assistant cook - who had been listening intently to the drama - were startled by the skinny man who stumbled into the kitchen island. The hobbled DCI knocked the tray to the final course of tonight's dinner over. Quickly, the dazed inspector reached for a knife when George came stalking into the kitchens. Mrs. Patmore, grabbed her young assistant out of the way as the master of the house moved in.

The knife swished one way, then the other, cutting the air sharply. But George contorted forward, to let the first swing pass jut out of reach of his torso. Then, he reared backward his upper body, the flick of sharp metal slicing the air just out of reach of the youth's chest. The boy countered, waiting till the swing of the blade had past, before kicking the kitchen knife out of the Inspector's hands. He backhanded the Billy Club across the policeman's face drawing blood from his mouth.

The older man fell in a heap, sliding down the kitchen island, before George grabbed him back to his feet. This time he lifted him up and threw him over the island. There was a mighty crash of pots and pans as he landed on the iron stove. The rest of the used cook wear clattered to the floor, when he slid off the tops of the unlit burners. But by that time, George had vaulted cleanly over the obstacle. He pulled him off the floor by his thick curls and slammed him over the table.

By the time everyone had arrived, they had witnessed the end of it. There was something wild and terribly vicious that swirled deep within George's soul. He repeatedly smashed the Inspector's face, again and again, on the cutting board of the kitchen island with pure hate in every blow. Inside was the last bubbling chorus of the night's violence and sin. The anger, the rage, of being put into an unwinnable situation, a scenario that should never have existed in the first place, coursed through him. But mostly the worst of the rage, which the Inspector was on the wrong end of, had been directed at George himself. With each thump of the man's head against the tabletop, the youth heard the desperation in the ranting of Freddie Moorsum that fateful day in Ripon a little clearer than before.

After the last hard thrash of the Inspector's head against the island, George pinned the side of his face on the bloodied cutting board. The man's glasses were long lost. His nose twisted to nearly one side, chopped fruits were stuck to bloody rivers that were running freely from mouth and broken nose. But he was still conscious enough to be addressed by his attacker. George drew an Apache Bowie Knife from his belt. twirling it expertly through his fingers, he stabbed it inches from the man's face that lay pinned to the surface with a loud thud. Blood shot eyes widened just an inch at the sight of a blade that was still stained with the viscous dark crimson of several now dead conspirators' life blood.

"If you ever threaten my family again, I swear I'll give your wife a real, sanctioned, excuse to cuck you this time … and give your Mohel a ' ** _tiny'_** , nostalgic, present for Passover."

Letting the inspector see the blood still running down the silvery Spanish steel of the double-edged blade, George lifted him off the cutting board by his hair. Then, with a violent shove, like he was throwing an alley cat out of a garbage can, the Inspector stumbled for a step before slamming face first into the chrome refrigerator in the corner of the kitchen. The large machine rattled, the force of the collision jarring loose items inside. Slowly, the Inspector slid down the front of the metal door, blood and pieces of strawberry staining the stainless steel on his way down.

Just then one of the officers came toward George, but he halted when the young man took a stance of defense, taking up the club once more. There was a tense second of ambiguity between him and the rest of the officers. But it all drained away when the Sergeant stood at attention, holding his hand out.

In times such as these, there was still a code of common law. None of the York Officers had ever felt truly comfortable breaking that tradition, even when ordered by a superior supervisor. They were not a stranger to Grantham County, some of them having family here, others having grown up in the place, before moving to the big city. But many of them fought alongside George, had gone to Inverness and joined the rebels marshalling at the standing stones. But since the victory, they had been torn between their duty to their station and that of where they had come from. The Inspector was ever testing their loyalties. Thus, whether they thought George was right, or if it had come from a place of pure prejudice against the man's faith, no one had stepped in to help the Inspector who was being thrashed by the young captain. In York it would be one thing, but in Grantham County, in the Countryside, there were lines one did not cross. And the Inspector learned the hard way about threatening a man's family within his own house, whether they were a Lord or Farmer.

Later, when questioned, each officer would refuse to corroborate the Inspector's account of the incident.

With a knowing look, George surrendered the policeman's own club. He smoothly tossed it over to the officer who caught it with a dutiful hand. After a long, calming, breath the youth motioned to the writhing police inspector at the foot of Downton's refrigerator. With a nod of understanding, the sergeant sheathed his club, stuffing his helmet underarm tighter, before motioning several of his men to collect the beaten man. They snapped to it, each grabbing an arm, and dragging him out toward the back exit of Downton's downstairs. As he slid by, George spat in his passing before snatching a crystal decanter of the chosen pudding wine for the night's dessert. When the last police officer had left, the sergeant turned and bowed to Lady Hexham, as well as Lord and Lady Grantham before promptly exiting as the last.

There was a sudden and terribly long silence that hung over the kitchen of Downton Abbey. George took a large swig of the alcohol straight from the decanter. He let the thick tang engulf his senses, while the burning zapped his mind numb for a moment. When he swallowed, he leaned over the kitchen island. He let out a small amused snort at his Mohel comment in self-reflection that came in the disorientation of the 'zing' of the alcohol. However, after a long pause, his smirk fell away when he looked up to find that his entire family and the staff were watching him. Not a face in the crowd seemed amused or grateful to the young man for what had just taken place.

They were all, in one form or the other, horrified of what they just witnessed.

It was the first time for most of the inhabitants of Downton Abbey to have seen the dark side of George Crawley. They had all heard stories, over the years, of the young man. But how much of that was real and how much of it was fiction had been anyone's guess. Those who had seen him in America, especially after the incident in New York involving Lady Rose and Bertie, knew of George's dark side, had no doubt it existed, but still they had not seen it … all except Lady Rose on one horrible Halloween night in 'Dutch Town' Manhattan.

Lady Edith, Tom, Sybbie, and Marigold, had seen George kill men before in Mexico and Texas. But he had done it in order to save their lives and his Aunt from being violated by native outlaws. Then, he had been cold and competent, his movements smooth and elegant. But this out of control and vicious savage who beat men to a pulp in the kitchen and swigged alcohol was something, someone, which no one knew at all.

The blackest of tempers was the curse of the Crawley's that went back too far. Lord Grantham had it terribly, ever since Mr. Carson could remember. However, he had spent the balance of his life trying to control it and had done an admirable job. But there were times when it came out, especially as he got older, before his ulcer. The curse had skipped over Lady Mary and Lady Edith who had their mama's even keel and were completely unshakable in times of crisis. But Lady Sybil had always shown signs of it. It was not showcased often. After all, the girl was, in truth, the kindest soul that ever lived under Downton's roof - at least till her beloved niece Marigold. But, even then, when that lovely young thing was cross, when someone pushed too hard, Lady Sybil let the world know.

In the young woman's life, she had more than once matched roars with her papa, as well as crossly checked Doctor Clarkson on bad days at the Hospital. Tom Branson had become right acquainted with the dark moods of his wife and knew when to steer clear of her in those rare times. But Robert and, certainly, Cora had hoped that Sybil was the last to inherit these terrible rages. Neither Sybbie nor Marigold had even the slightest of tempers, beyond the usual human reaction to stress. However, for Master George, the boy was cursed with both an extra boost of Poldark and Crawley.

He didn't stand a chance in the end.

So clearly now did they see how deep the pain and anger dove into a young man that spent too many years alone, in the worst places in the world. Each terrible memory and scar from a wound to the soul was visible in the dark aura that surrounded him. It was so clear now, so perfectly visible in the violence of his actions. They saw the demon that was inside George Crawley that Jonah Robinson had warned them about. It was just for a second, but they had all seen it. Yet, it wasn't anger nor hate that drove him. It was the slow, sickly feeling of a yesterday, of a night, not so different than this one. It was a split-second choice a boy made one terrible night in New Orleans that haunted him ever after. The world moved darkly in the vibrations of guilt and regret that hummed in the air like the stricken cords of an out of tune harp.

He was at his peak hardboiled disillusionment of deep world weariness.

George looked at each one of his family's faces, both biological and downstairs. They didn't know what to say, if there was anything that could be said. Just like another group of people tonight, they, for the first time, saw that the stories about him were true. There was no escaping the fact that George had killed people. They had all known that he had, the boy had never lied about it. But this was the first time that they had seen the aftermath of what that meant.

They saw what it looked like, and what it did to someone right afterward. The dead tonight weren't foreign soldiers of fortune or strangers in a Hooverville in some derelict American city. They were young men of their village, boys they had become familiar with over the years of their growing up here. It was made all the clearer by his terribly violent attacking of the Inspector, and the way he beat on him. It was brutal and animalistic, unrestrained and wild. It was everything that they, as a whole of a household, upstairs and downstairs, were not.

Never before or since was the boy more a stranger in his own home, to his own family, than he was that night.

George sniffed hard, looking down at the surface of the island, away from the mixture of horror, shock, and disbelief of all the faces of the people he loved. Finally, he stood to full height, sheathing his blade at his side, before taking another long draft of the decanter. He walked forward toward the servant's hall. When he was done with his pull on the crystal container, he shoved Lord Grantham's favorite vintage into his chest disrespectfully. The two locked eyes, the anger was simmering off George anew.

All it took was one look to know that the boy held Lord Grantham as responsible for what happened tonight as the Inspector. He then pushed past the older man and his granny. As he passed, the combined group of his family only watched in silence, not sure who they were looking at anymore. But still, George took a moment to rudely bump Lady Mary out of the way with his shoulder. Tom would've made something of it, but Mary stopped him. Unlike her papa, she was very aware of the reason he did that. And thinking back to two days in a board room in Ripon …

Maybe she deserved it.

But just as he cleared the family, head downcast, he stopped when someone stood apart, in his way. He looked up to find Sybbie, a vision in silk and pearls. The sight of her was the only thing that broke George's stoic haze. There was longing and incredible sorrow in her sad demure eyes. He knew what was on her mind, what was in her tender heart. She could barely recognize the youth who stood in front of her. He had been a young man so suddenly tormented and uncontrollably angry. The last words the two inseparable friends had spoken to one another had been so awfully hurtful, and since then, the raven-haired girl had nearly cried herself to sleep most nights, clinging to their mamma or Marigold.

But it seemed that without Sybbie as a guiding light in life, her love and large heart a beacon that held back the night, George wasn't faring well. The resolutions of his sleuthing cases spoke to it. For the last month it was visible to everyone who came against him that there was a new type of mean in George Crawley. It didn't matter if it was the way his mind worked or the way he fought. He was more brutal, savage, and incredibly cynical. One could only wonder, as George had tormented over all night …

If Sybbie had been there, could she have convinced her partner of another way? Would she have guided him to another approach than his incredibly vicious conclusion with those he had fought tonight? It seemed only a genius Celtic Princess could turn George's primal instincts for a brutal resolution of "Depression Justice" of cynical mind and broken bones, into a charming caper of a mystery with a neat headline at the end. Yet, without her there to prevail on George's better nature, there were bound to be many more nights like this.

But, even in his need of her, there was something about the girl, something about her involvement in this tragedy, that made George avert his eyes under her gaze. She began to notice that he was not the first person to do this to her tonight. And all she wished in that moment was for someone to tell her what she had done wrong. But, instead, there was something guilty in George's eyes which visibly tore him apart from the inside.

It had been one more unwinnable situation that he had been put into, which there was no good answer to be had. Once more anger masked a beautiful girl's welling tears when her best friend in the whole universe, the young man she wanted to spent the rest of her life with, brushed passed her. What hurt even worse, was that he had his head down, refusing to even look at her. She watched in tears as George made for the servant's stairs.

"Cap'n …"

Slowly, George mounted the steps to the servant's stairway above. He had made it halfway up when he stopped. He turned to find that the person who had called him was Sergeant Willis. Since the moment that George had brought him to Downton during the dinner rush, the old man hadn't moved from where Anna and Mrs. Baxter had sat him. Even at the peak of the goings on in the servant's hall tonight, he couldn't find the strength - in any capacity within a human being - to get up. But now, as the whole ordeal was at an end, he didn't think it proper not to say something of what happened. So, he walked over to the foot of the servant's stairs as George was leaving.

"Cap'n, I …" The man drew off, finding it hard to voice feelings that were still raw and jumbled. "Cap'n, I … I just wanted to …" He struggled, looking up the stairs to find that George's entire figure was cloaked in darkness as he held in the middle of the steps, looking back with a featureless shadowy face. "Cap'n, I … I don't … I don't know what to say." He shook his head. "I … I knew those boys, knew most of them all their lives." He sighed emotionally. "I gave them candy, and helped them at the water fountain, and I bought them _ice cream_ …" His voice cracked with a sob.

He shook his head as he cleared his throat. "And I know they, they didn't give you a choice … and I'm sorry for that." He nodded. "Yes, uh, yes, I'm terribly sorry for that, Cap'n." He breathed harshly. "It's just that … you see, I knew them their whole lives, and I didn't think they'd … I would never have believed …" tears ran down his face. "If I had, I would've never put you in that position … it wasn't fair, sir, not a bit." He shook his head. "But I just …" He looked up at George with the most shattered of hearts. "They were gonna shoot me, Cap'n … I knew them their entire lives and the lads, they were gonna kill me … and I … I bought them ice cream, Cap'n … I had bought them …" His big chest shook as he sobbed, falling down at the foot of the steps.

"I'm sorry, Cap'n, I'm so sorry for everything! I'm sorry for everything …" He covered his face as he sobbed alone in front of the old mirror at the foot of the servant's staircase.

The nod George gave, whether bitter, incredulous, sympathetic, or all, was lost in ambiguity as he ascended into darkness.


	8. Of Guinevere and Lancelot - Part I

_Two Weeks Later_

The moon waxed in a bright glow that illuminated the dreary darkness in a blue hue which cast the skeletal silhouettes of ancient trees with tall and terrible shadows. Their twisted reflections caught in the rippling creeks of runoff, ever surrendering their colored leaves to the autumn wind which plundered their auburn and gold. The bitter breeze hissed through the forests, whispering on the biting air the rumor of snow which would come unlooked for from the North. Each muttering, each hint of the future, had fallen from the sky like the colored leaves of the forest, slowly drifting down into the mists and landing, soundlessly, on the water’s surface. Tiny ripples pulsed over the reflection of the mysterious face of the half-shadowed crescent which set aglow the swirling mists of the coming witching hours upon the long dark of a lonesome highway. 

There was a specter of some great and terrible foreboding that swirled and delved deeply into the night. Bones ached, knees locked, and old war wounds burned as if newly gained. It was what one felt when a weather system of bitter seasons came rapping on the doors at the end of an English Summer’s tenancy. But there was something different about this evening. Anyone who had lived in this country grandeur could tell you by the way the air sank heavily on the lungs, the way the shadows crept and crowded the lights, and the way the voice in the wind sighed in the dimming moonlight. Those few which served in the trenches, who made it back in one piece, gripped tighter their fork, their armchair, waiting for the whistle that would send them over the top once more.

One could never quite place where the feeling of knowing that something wasn’t right came from. Old soldiers checking their back doors, mother’s leave behind their needle point to peek into their children’s rooms. The old holy men go back to their perish and say a prayer for whatever they would face on the morrow when the first peaks of sunlight shine from the Gates of Morning. All they could do, all that were joined to this communal phenomenon, was hope that this phantasmal entity which haunted their unsleeping mind passed them over on its way to bring folly to some other unsuspecting creature. They retreat into their own lives and homes’, protecting what was theirs. They all, suspecting, that whatever will or was happening would affect them somehow. It was a uniquely human response to a flicker of instincts born on the plains and river valleys of the first civilizations of man. The lack of animal instinct localizing this odd feeling of a trepidatious and sneaking danger that was around them.

But for one who did not have four walls and a gate to shut, it was greatly more difficult. And in the swirling mists of evening, the moon peeking through the damp obscurity of a lonesome stretch of countryside road, a solitary truck sailed through the night. In these moments, after so many hours logged in a book, with just one more trip, the shakes of the autumn night’s atmosphere fed deeply. Driving a truck was not a secure position, but one held so dearly. Most men would kill for even this job. One might have found the idle sensation of driving a truck up and down from North Riding to Northumberland to be tiresome work, and they’d be right. But when you see breadlines and starving children in the streets of the northern cities, it was hard not to imagine your own children, yourself, in those terrible queues. It was an extra incentive to make one more trip, take on more shifts, just to be sure. But the side effects of those ministrations, that extra burden upon a human spirit manifested in different ways in a job so menial to the mind in the evening hours. 

One had to deal with odd figures standing off to the side of the road, sometimes disappearing in the flash of the headlights. They were Banshees, ‘Women in White’, and other creatures told to children which adults grew to understand were only to make them behave. Yet, does anyone ever fully give up in the belief of their existence - especially after ten hours on the road? Glowing eyes of hidden animals and other beasts caught in the light, glaring from the tree lines, brought a shadow of threat to even the sharpest of minds. In this stress of Depression, the ominous ticks of something amiss, and in the middle of the third shift, the mind and eye began to play tricks as the hours went on and sunlight became more and more scarce. And somewhere on that lonely road, dug by Romans, and paved over by subsequent generations through the centuries, brought an acute awareness of history, old lore, and the many fantastical imaginations of what lay in wait in the thickets and trees beyond.

It was not just creatures of imagination and myth which posed a great threat to who was behind the wheel. It was many other things of a more ‘real’ nature. All who carried such things of perceived worth, even in the old days, avoided the roads at night in the days of Turpin and Robin of Locksley - those magnificent figures of yore. They were highwaymen of great quality which carried off jewels and gold from carriage and horsemen. But in the year of 1936, gold had great value, and jewels could fetch a price in the right hands in London. But more valuable still was the golden grains of many a field which was taken to the mills of north most Yorkshire. The whitest of oats and flours carried thrice the weight of the heaviest and whitest of diamonds that adorned a Great Lady’s heirloom.

It was not the trips to Brancaster which bothered the driver, for in the mornings they loaded down his truck with rolled and tightly packed bushels of wheat, which he drove up to the mills. But the danger lied on his trips back, when the workers unloaded the golden stalks and replaced them with sacks of flour and oats to be taken to the factories. But the most dangerous of trips came in the last evening delivery, when there was not a soul on the road, and the knowledge of the cargo and the consequence of such weighed heavily with every pound of rough spun sack. At any moment, at any time, all it took was one desperate man, a group of them, empty coffers, empty bellied, to overtake him and his truck. Then, his only wish was for death, because, the mill would surely sack him, and that desperate life was one he could not abide.

Thus, it was great torment that a deep suspicion, which hardened in the gut of a weary figure whose strained mind was lost in a shadowy forest of doubts, cast its spell. He held to the steering wheel tightly, palms wetted in stress. Squinted grey eyes focused on the road ahead, avoiding the periphery where phantoms of the night and imagination lurked, their deathless eyes piercing flesh, mind, and soul. Deep sighs echoed through the cab, sputtering in the exhale. Long had he waited for these sensations, this strange episode, to pass over him. Welled deep was the anxiety of the lonely and uneventful night on the same road which he traveled for months. But still the wheels of fate and doom turned ever louder on the eves of the Doors of Night, as if their sounds chased him like hounds from the county. And in its echo was a great fire within him to exit, to clear the area. For, indelibly, in his own mind, he perceived that some event of dark machination was about to happen which he did not wish to be privy too. But more so did he take to heart the human instinct that such an evil happenstance would befall him. That it was him, personally, which was the target of such sudden fell prophecy.

His heart raced harder in his chest, sweat glistened on his forehead, as he looked ahead. Even over the rumble of his own engine, the driver heard it coming. It was like the roar of a mythological beast in the distant night, ever holding in its ferocity and rage. It came louder, its torqueing fury echoed in bass through the twisted branches and ancient trunks of the damp forest. Its roars caused shivering ripples on the quiet stilled waters crowded by fallen leaves, as if the very spirits of the forest shuttered and feared its coming. The driver’s breath came shortly as the noise became focused, coming closer, till all the road about him was reverberating with its angry howls to the crescent moon above.

Then, he saw it. Just a flicker of light cutting through mist and trunk on the other side of the bend of the road. It became focused, coming full power, like search lights in the dark. He made a noise of distress as he became engulfed in light, the obscurity of the mist just dimming the onslaught of golden beam. His engine mingled with the roar of this monster. The mixture created a booming wall of sound all around him as the hollow woods picked up this thunderous clash of mechanical engineering. Ever the brighter the single ocular light became as the moments passed, coming closer and closer to his position. He did not know what he thought it was, what it could be, or what it really was. His mind was eclipsed by all sorts of fantastical torments and figures which haunted the bleak nights of his childhood and his time in the trenches of Palestine.

It seemed at any moment it would be on him, this indiscernible figure that hunted and thundered through the evening gloom at the edge of forbidden lands. But still he braced his wheel, his foot stamping hard on the break as the single light broke through the mist of the tree line. The supply truck screeched to a halt, a silent scream echoing from his throat as the driver was engulfed in light. A motorcycle just missed the back of the truck when it leapt from the hillside tree line and landed on the narrow road on both wheels. The driver watched as it bared its rider into the blue as he stormed off into the obscurity of the night in the opposite direction.

There was madness to the rider who sped away desperately.

It was in the gloom of the fading day, in a quiet hour, which a tall grandfather clock ticked into the silence of a study in shadows. The last light was a brilliant pink and orange - the Evening Star like a sparkle of glitter stuck to a dampened water painting. The last rose buds of summer reflected from the stained-glass pockets of the Tudor windows of the country home. Their shadows were cast gently on an old and heavy oaken desk crowded with many papers and open books filled with ancient runes and depictions of knights on crusade. Yet, the figure that sat in that quiet sanctum - decorated with wonderous treasures and artifacts of past adventure - did not ponder on his studies and research.

The fond reminiscing of forests and dancing princesses - elven fair - came upon by weary travelers brought him elsewhere in mind. And it was in the writings and storytelling of longing and forbidden love that his mind ever strayed to a golden-haired ballerina. Fore, it was in the realms of twilight and dawn, when the world was in between, and the mind vulnerable to such melancholy fancies, that she entered his heart most in that quiet solitude. And it was when the Evening Star was most visible in the sky was the time when he could almost reach out, almost touch her. When he squeezed his eyes shut, he could almost feel her breath upon his ear as she lay her head on his shoulder.

When he had been so far away, in foreign lands and terrible places aplenty, he had always looked to the planet of love disguised as a lone star. From his granny’s old rooms in New York and New Orleans, to his drafty cell in a Memphis labor prison, and ever did he feel alone in his subterranean dungeon in Mexico veiled from her gaze. He never looked to the moon for comfort as others had. It waxed and waned, disappearing during times of the day, and was in other places in different time zones. But ever did the Evening Star remain, ever visible, ever steady, no matter where you traveled. No matter where they were, or how far apart they had become, he could always look to the sky and find her there. But even in the hardest and most devastating of truths revealed, it was in these times, when its shine was the brightest…

That shattered dreams of the oldest and truest loves die hard.

And it was in his long-drawn gaze toward the lone sparkle in the darkening sky that the most uproarious thundering came. His chest tightened; his muscles coiled - old reflexes sharpened in terrible memories of terrible days. Nothing had put the young man on edge like the sudden assault of loud noises. When it came again, longer, harder, this pounding of his front door, he slipped to his feet. As he moved forward, his housekeeper came stalking quickly from the kitchen, rubber yellow gloves stained with drain cleaner. Her dark eyes met her master’s blue, both in confusion, as they paced together to the front door. There, they found a pale, sweaty, man. He wore a tweed suit and large brimmed hat. His girth matched his beard, which overshadowed his small dark eyes. He heaved, not in physical strain, but instead, it came from a great exertion of one’s own mortality. It was the torment of one’s own soul in sight of something truly awful. The young master of the house knew the look, he had seen it far too many times for one of such premature age, and it had graced his own handsome face more than once.

It was unfair, and Ethel Parks voiced it immediately. She was a mother - not an involved one, nor one which was welcome into her child’s heart or life - but still did those instincts come naturally. And the attractive mature woman voiced her dissent bitterly that it was the sheriff himself who had come to their door that evening. He did not come with handcuffs or papers, only a haunted look on a sweat glistening face. He panted and shook his head, burying his eyes in his forearm that rested on Crawley House’s doorframe. Ethel’s protests came not for his interruption of their evening, but of what she knew, what they both knew, the sheriff had wanted of the young Captain. And for this favor that he was wordlessly asking, did he buy it with a great damage to his own pride and manhood.

It was with a hardened heart and steadfast demeanor that the young man agreed with the silent request of his presence. His housekeeper told him not to do it, that it was ‘the fool’s job’ to attend such things. It was what Lord Grantham pays him for! But the youth didn’t answer the older woman, only grabbing his Mexican weapon’s belt off a peg and buckling the silver clasp to his waist. Once more he was reminded that he didn’t have to go, that he was the Sergeant-At-Arms for Downton Abbey and the Grantham Estate, not ‘the whole blooming county’. But the youth only took Mina Murray’s navy-blue scarf and his leather peacoat off his ancestors’ suit of knight’s armor and followed the traumatized lawman out into the evening.

Hours later there was nothing but twisting shadows and a single beam from the cycle that led the way through the dark and twisting path to a county seat. A golden glow illuminated goggle covered cerulean eyes that looked straight ahead, the peripheral focused on the twisting and jagged silhouette of wooded and brushy undergrowth. The glare of his headlight reflected off the cobble stone path on a lonesome dark highway. He had become familiar with this road, long before he had left. A lot of things had changed since he had first become intimate with the wooded pathway, his own eyes included. They were much more haunted, harder and sharp. Back then he had to work to look this way, bury the innocence of a child who loved too much. Now he looked this way, because, it was who he is. He wasn’t sure if he should mourn that, or finally celebrate it. But then the worst thing those young eyes had seen to that point was a dead baby sister and a mother who forgot how to cry. Now, ten years later, he knew intimately that there were many more worse things in this world.

And he had seen them all by now. 

The Sheriff came to him that evening, not because he was an experienced bounty hunter, a vigilante, and famed sleuth for hire. He came to him, because, the sheriff was from the Town of Downton. He spent his days by the bakers and visiting with shop owners. He was present for notaries, and to stand by the podium for Lord Grantham’s speeches. He served evictions for rents unpaid, for seizures of lands taken in hand, and escort for tax collections. He was not a popular man. Often had he been accused of sucking up to ‘the family’, and especially to Lady Mary in her reign, of whom he was in love with. All these reasons were why he came rapping upon Crawley House’s door that evening. It was, because, he was the Sheriff of Grantham County, not Scotland Yard. He was not prepared, nor could he bear, to which he led the youth too that evening. But he knew that the young Captain had seen, if not worse, certainly to the level of horror committed that very twilight. 

The one of a kind, experimental, motorcycle - designed by Sybbie Branson - weaved around the bend. Charging from darkness it left fallen leaves scattering in its thunderous wake. In the thinning woods he saw the outlines of a mighty and weathered structure starting to peak behind branch and leaved screens. The sight of it caused the teenager to grip the handle harder with his leather gauntleted hand. By the time that the motorcycle burst forth from the long acreage of forested miles of Northumberland, it was going full throttle as it hit stride into the vast open glens. Grown out waving curls of raven hair dampened in a thick mist that moistened goggles.

His speed was so great that he felt that he was chumming through a little creek headfirst. But he pushed the machine to the limit, testing the sturdy make of the sleek prototype - built from scratch by trusted hands of the workers of “Branson and Talbot Motor’s” garage and dreamt into reality by the genius of Sybil Afton Branson. At any other hard snaking curve, a planted foot would be needed, and subsequently would’ve been lost by the rider. But the bike only torqued into a drift before exploding forth down the single road - smoother than ‘Louisiana Lightning’.

From the moonlit road, flooded with mist, the rider saw that a great arch of stone flanked by two carved great griffins was up ahead. There were signs in big bold letters which discouraged and sternly warned against trespassing on private lands of a vast estate. To belabor a point, till it was inescapable, there was six feet of cold rolled bars of iron, each end was guarded by mighty stone griffin, and a guard station with a human security man behind.

The guard had been blowing the steam off his thermos cup of tea when he had seen the first glow of headlights from the forest and heard the torqued power of no machine he could recall. He had slowly poured the Earl Grey back into the thermos, and was screwing the cap back on, when he saw the approaching motorcycle. He was opening his booth’s door, sighing in annoyance. There was no hurry to confront the interloper, not when the ‘Governess cart’ was parked in front of the gate.

After the “Shoot” today, the gamekeeper said that it threw an axel. They were going to tow it for a fix at the garage in the morning, but for now they had left it in front of the gate. The guard’s only problem had been that if any of their guests decided to leave early, or to do an errand tonight, they might not get through. But he was assured ‘that lot’ would just get a servant to do it. But now, at least, he had a buffer against unwanted chaff. And, with the guest list full, whoever the bloke on the bike was, he certainly wasn’t on it. But a deep anxiety began to build inside the man when …

The motorcycle didn’t slow down.

Later, he would only remember shouting a few words … then screaming a few choice ones. But still the motorcycle kept coming. It didn’t break, didn’t slow, even in sight of cart and iron gate. Instead, much to the dismay of the guard, the rider poured more speed on, going faster in sight of the obstacle. The man backed away slowly out of some subconscious reflex, nervously sure that the bike would not be able to crash through the gate. But still, when he was encompassed by the brilliant headlight of the motorcycle, he was filled with doubt. He watched in slack jawed shock as the rider in goggles, long gauntlets, and double-breasted coat of beaten leather and collar done up, jumped the futuristic bike on top of the governess cart. Then, using it like a ramp, he vaulted the motorcycle into the air. He cleared the top of the gate and the stunned guard. The man turned and watched as the rider landed with just the back wheel on the path, doing a wheelie while in stride before momentum pushed the front wheel down on the pavement. For a long moment the guard watched the bike continue to storm down the path toward the estate. When he came to his senses, he found himself left cringing, knees bent and knocked together, crouching in flinch. He was clutching his thermos as a child would a Teddy

The bike disappeared under the mountainous shadow of tall grey walls that stretched high and darkly into the night sky, their tops lost in the swirling obscurity that clung to the foot of the hill whose ring they drew around. Imperially perched on a great green crest sat an ancient and imposing keep of a castle which glowed softly alight from many lit windows in the distance. The ancient stone was pocked with deep black and green stains, like kidney spots on a wizened old king. In the gloom of rolling mist, the ancient fortress stood sentry against the Doors of Night, shielding all light of moon and star from visibility in the watchmen’s hours. From the darkness of its stately silhouette, a single headlight cut through the blanket of invisibility as it climbed the stone fairway up the hill adjacent to the outer curtain wall. From the distance, its reflection in the manmade creek that ran through the Pelham’s gardens was like the midnight strafing of a firefly across the cold rippling water.

The portcullis gate of Brancaster Castle was open, left that way in the confidence of the iron bars and stone sigils of the ruling House of Hexham. It was only when the youth passed underneath the ancient pointed steel that hung above the entrance of the grey stone walls that he began slowing. Immediately, as he cruised into the yard of the castle, his covered eyes were drawn to the rooms above, glowing in yellows and oranges of lights muted by drawn curtains. Still he did not stop or slow to conventional speeds till he saw the crowded entrance of the keep. There, by the two great doors of the castle, all around the stone courtyard, where sleek and expensive motors whose cost might have fed a lowly working-class family for a year. Not a soul stirred as he made his way up to the courtyard, passing arch, and jostling with every hit of broken cobble stone.

There was not a man in the world more desperate and fearful as the youth who immediately shut off his motorcycle. From the moment he lifted his goggles up to his forehead and dismounted, he sprinted for the tall double doors. He didn’t knock, didn’t think that at a time such as this they would do such a stupid thing as hinder him. But when the young man pulled on a very familiar door to find it not budging, he resolved to pull even harder, causing the door the rattle violently. He shouted a rather scandalous curse that echoed through the courtyard of stone, stirring several feral cats from hiding and into a sprint elsewhere. He was suddenly assaulted, in the obstruction, by the images of the evening. The sheer horror of what he saw, the noises of the Sheriff, a man full grown, vomiting in a rose garden. The freshest of traumas was reflected in the manner and force of the hammering of the leather covered fist upon the medieval doors of the ancient castle. The wood shook violently, squeaking and banging at the sheer force which echoed throughout the halls, causing an abrupt halt of all things within.

Finally, after a loud, booming, and persistent assailing on the evening’s festivities, the sound of door bolts slid audibly out of place. A golden glow of light and warmth was cast into the dreary gloom of the courtyard when the door to the castle was opened just a crack. The face which looked out into the cold autumn blue saw a dark figure attempting to lift a carved stone statue of a griffin to be used as a battering ram against the door. But when he heard the squeak of ancient hinges, the youth immediately dropped the heavy decoration. He made straight for the man, but his response was not favorable when he braced the door even slighter. In the crack of warmth and light which parted shadow and darkness, they met eyes … and that was a grim meeting, indeed.

Fore they knew who the other was.

The balding, rotund, man with handlebar mustache and livery didn’t look as old as the youth would’ve thought. But his hair situation had grown worse - which was a small comfort. The look in the dark grey eyes of the Butler of Brancaster Castle said that he should’ve known that such a thunderous and inexorable racket could’ve been made by only one heathen. Long had it been since the two both seen one another, and it was surely not long enough - for the hatred bore between George Crawley and Mirada and Bertie Pelham’s butler was as fresh as the day an eight-year-old boy kneecapped the man with a fire poker. It was an incident that was the first germination of a much larger issue blooming in the failing House of Hexham. And George, under that man’s hateful gaze, could not deny that this very evening had a familiarity to that one night, eight years prior. It was a sentiment that was shared with the butler who would not long forget the limp he walked with.

“Move aside!” George demanded. But the bigger man braced the door against him.

“That, I cannot do … _Captain_!” He seemed to choke on the rank.

“It’s an emergency!”

“Then, sir, I will take a message, and you may wait for consideration before her ladyship _might_ join you … here.” The man made a serious point of making it known that George was not allowed inside.

“I don’t have time for this, you fat slob!” The youth sniped with sheer distain for the very posh and musical voice the butler spoke with.

He tried to force the door open, but the larger man ripped it out of the teenager’s grip. His dark eyes looked like burning coals at the comment. There had never been a man in the service of Aristocracy, since Charles Carson, who put more work in his grooming and appearance. Even eight years later, the young rebel still knew how to get to him.

“Her Ladyship decreed, many long years ago, that **you** would never step foot on this estate as long as a Pelham was Marquess of Hexham. And, by god, sir, I will see her wishes done as long as I’m butler here!” He snapped.

“Mirada Pelham will spend the rest of her life washing porcelain dolls in boiling vats of bleach, pretending they were filthy little girls who sin! She’s in Carfax, where I sent her! - getting switched by nurses, and being force fed semolina, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer cunt! Lady Edith is the Marchioness and Ladyship of this estate, and your mistress … you will let me pass!” Even as George said it, he knew that the man would never accept it.

He sure didn’t when his Aunt and Marigold had last lived here.

Mirada Pelham had chosen her son’s staff in the days after he was named Marquess and had, momentarily, split from Edith after Marigold’s maternity was revealed. The sins of the former Marquess, his vices for exotic young boys had tainted the deeply weakened House of Hexham. Thus, as a moralist - near Calvinist - Mirada went to work. Her staff was chosen on their upright morality and precautions which would assure they’d dare not shame, nor gossip, against Bertie. There were rumors which said that Mrs. Pelham’s methods were harsh, punishing, and damn near gregarious. Bertie had his misgivings about the things he was hearing, but Mirada often confronted him over such rumors personally, questioning his commitment to restoring what was broken by a terrible man which Bertie was tricked into great affection for.

When Edith married Bertie, the man was quick to allow his beloved wife to choose her own staff. But, eager to co-exist with Mirada, she allowed her mother-in-law to manage, as Edith and Bertie’s life would revolve around London mostly anyway. Thus, it was, that under the iron hand of Mirada Pelham that the staff of Brancaster Castle was seen by the visiting parties of guests and servants of Downton Abbey as secretive, reclusive, and ever silent in the presence of strangers. It was said, over the years, that any dinner party given by the Marchioness of Hexham at Brancaster was one dreaded by the Crawley family and especially their servants. But there was one thing that was known, quite quickly, and that was that they remained ever loyal to Mirada Pelham. Edith was the Lady of the house, but there was no debate of whose creatures they were.

The woman, often, put her servants through tests of loyalty and morality, as she ever did her own family. They were little tricks when it came to Edith - a lord leaving his money behind. A Countess leaving some jewels in her room, jewels that Edith rather admired. Of course, she always passed, putting Mirada at ease … for a time. But they said that the tests that she had put her own servants through were monstrous. Of the things spoken were nothing but rumors, tests of loyalty, of virtue, of even sexuality. George had once recalled being in the servant’s hall of Brancaster, helping Anna with some mending to Sybbie’s nightgown, when he saw the burns of a branding iron on the collarbone of a maid who spilt tea on herself. Noticing that George saw it, the young woman quickly covered herself and fled from the small boy’s eyes. Once a servant applied to Mirada Pelham’s service, you never left - _not ever_. And those who remained, past the horrible event of eight years ago, and the terrible fate of Bertie in New York, remained loyal to an ever increasingly disturbed mistress. Like whipped dogs, or broken drones, they were pathological in their paranoid devotion to the House of Hexham and to the moral crusade of Mirada Pelham.

And even when George locked the woman up in Carfax Asylum: Imperial Penitentiary for the Criminally Insane, her staff, out of fear, held to her words.

“If you wish to speak with her Ladyship, then I suggest that you make a note, which I will take after they’ve finished dinner.” The butler was implacable, putting all his weight and force of personality into deterring the youth from entering his mistress’s home.

George looked near in rage but saw the weight discrepancy between them. “Fine …” he snarled, looking out toward the glowing bedchambers above them. “Fine …” He repeated, spying the leg which braced the door. “You got a pen?” He sighed in distress. The man glowered at the request – suspicious. But professionally trepidatious, he reached into his livery. Ever the soul of preparedness, he took out a fountain pen and unscrewed the cap. Then, grudging every second, the butler held it out to George.

“Thanks …”

**“AAAAAHHH!”**

THUMMMPH!

Immediately, in the very moment that George took the pen in hand, he stabbed the brass point through the butler’s palm, pinning it to the wood of the door. Then, with a throw of his shoulder against it, he crushed the larger man’s knee between the two double doors. With all the larger man’s full weight on the leg, the butler let out a mighty cry as he fell into a heap in the doorway. Throwing the door open, the teenager grabbed the butler by the back of his hair, dragging him inside the warmth. One handed - with all the strength of a trained street fighter hardened on a Tennessee chain gang - George grabbed Mirada Pelham’s butler up by the collar of his livery. He pinned him to the door with his forearm to his neck.

“Where are they?!” His voice was low and gravelly, with a burning hate for the man in his power.

The Butler looked at the teenager blankly, jaw screwed tightly in defiance of the highest order.

“AAAHAHA!!”

“ **WHERE**?!” George ghoulishly roared, grabbing the fountain pen lodged in the man’s hand and jerking it. Blood ran darkly down the wooden door.

“Aaah, oh god, stop, stop … In the dining room! They’re in the dining room you half-breed, Papist …!”

His begging turned to the growling of a vicious anger driven by a deep pain. But he was cut off when George reared back and punched the man in the face with a sickening thud and crunch which was fueled by dark memories that filled him with an old blood lust. The butler’s eyes went glazed as he slammed against the doorframe and slid down. His hand flopped down to his side; the butler’s pen still impaled in his palm. For a blackest of moments, George Crawley looked over the fallen man and remembered a vow as old as the first hate that had ever awoke in him.

He had sworn then, in private to Anna and Thomas, that if he ever saw that man again, he’d kill him. It was only a pity that there was no time for such a deep satisfaction. And, indeed, had he taken some pence of solace in that a greater deed of deeper importance had stayed his hand this night. Yet, he did not depart without giving the fallen butler a fitting salute to his years of faithful service to the House of Hexham …

George spat on the man as he left him there bleeding.

The great hall of Brancaster was lit by crystal chandeliers, vaulted lights, golden lamps which illuminated great frames and curated canvas of many splendid paintings. They were landscapes of Italy and France through the eyes of the masters of the classical period of art. There were depictions of biblical events and Greek Mythology by pale curvaceous women, and half-dressed men in sculpted and ceremonial armor. There were many exquisite and highly detail-oriented vases on end tables, patterns of floral decoration gently painted onto the porcelain. Busts and statues of gods and figures of mythology and antiquity flanking halls sat ever watchful in the corners of expansive rooms. Their presence often lost in the grandeur of the expansive estate.

Brancaster was the last holdout, the last vestige of the extravagance of the old ruling class. It was the county seat, the seat of the entire region, and the very center of power in Northern England. Its halls were immaculately maintained to the most pristine quality. It was a quarter-government building, quarter-museum, and half-personal residence of the Marquess of Hexham. And all of it paid for in tax rather than out of pocket and profit of the Lord.

It seemed surreal that out of all the places of the world, George Crawley found himself here at Brancaster Castle. He was sure, with every part of himself, that he’d never step foot in these halls again. His mind was haunted by the regally painted walls decorated in opulent golden vine work and fleur-de-lis. It was with great sensitivity and flinching mind that he paced through the shimmering and shining spectacle of the embodiment of aristocratic romanticism. Fore it was here, among such splendor and beauty, that his darkest memories remained. Still in the night, he was awoken in gasping terror, soaked in sweat, shouting for Marigold. It didn’t matter how many times that his butler Ellis told him that she was safe. Or how deeply Sybbie kissed him in bed, holding him to her satin clad bosom tightly, reminding him that the incident was long past as she raked her elegant fingers through his sweaty raven locks. Ever in his dreams, in the tilted and disjointed terrors of the mind in sleep, did he see these golden halls of yore, and hear the screaming terror of a beautiful young girl with his name on her lips.

“Master George?!”

Anna Bates had heard the thunderous knocking, shouting, and screaming from the servant’s stairs. Quickly, she fled back out of the passage to see what had been going on. With Lady Mary’s pearly liquid satin night slip over her arm and Ms. Sybbie’s Jewelry box in hand, the lady’s maid halted at the bloody and brutalized appearance of The Marchioness’s butler. She was ready to ring downstairs to raise the alarm, till she saw the tall silhouette of a young man pacing through the great hall. Like a close aunt or long employed nanny and governess, Anna Bates didn’t need to see a face, hear a voice, to recognize George Crawley. It was a feeling she got in his presence, to the same consistency, but to a lesser degree, of how she knew her own children by instinct. And when she saw the perfectly grown out raven curls and peacoat of beaten leather with the collar did up in the back, she spoke before she even processed his appearance.

She didn’t need to ask anymore when he turned, and she saw the look in his eye that all mothers dread. For a moment she had feared that hearing his family had gone to Brancaster for the first time in eight years, George had followed to exact a justice long overdue and longer feared. And seeing the Pelham’s butler in the state he was in, the woman cursed at the thought of having been witness to a murder long coming. But when she saw the ragged breath of the large man’s gut heave, she let out just a semblance of relief. But it was short lived at the road worn and desperate look in her former charge’s eyes as he rushed up to her. The youth still wore his goggles and long gauntlets from his drive.

“Anna!”

“George … Master George, what’s going on?” She frowned.

“Anna, who’s here?!” The youth asked.

“Just myself, Mrs. Baxter, and Mr. Barrow, who agreed to look after his Lordship while Mr. Bates watches over Johnny and Lily. But you know that because Mr. Ellis has taken over as Butler at Downton for … why …?”

“Run downstairs, right now, and have Thomas load up Donk’s shotguns! Tell him to meet me in the dining room with both of them!” He ordered with a point to the servant’s stairs as he turned to leave.

The maid paused, twisting a foot in a conflicted tick of nervousness. She knew that something was going on, something serious. But she couldn’t stop herself from questioning the motive of who the antagonist of such a thing was. She swore, long ago, that she would never let what other people had said about the young lad effect how she felt about him. But that was before the Inspector and the incident in the kitchen. They had all watched George completely lose himself to a dark side so black. He could’ve beaten that horrible man to death, and right in front of them - the people who loved him. Anna had never seen anything like it, not in her entire life. And though she trusted and truly loved the young man of action, she could not forget what they all saw. Thus, Anna Bates balked at obeying George’s orders of loading guns and having them delivered to him. Her trepidation only enhanced in this place where she knew such darkness was truly manifested in his past.

But also, the sticky residue of the Butler of Brancaster’s blood still fresh upon knuckles of his left gauntlet.

The woman grounded the sole of her heel into the lush carpet of the castle hall, biting her lip. But there was something in George’s voice. It was a fear, desperation, which was pure. There was not a lie or deception in the intensity of the dark blue eyes of the youth before her. Though she had seen what she had in the servant’s hall just two weeks past, it was put up against years of knowing and trusting a small boy. And she’d put the words and promises of what her heart spoke against any doubt seen in the throes of a truly dark moment for anyone.

“NOW DAMNIT!”

George uncharacteristically snapped at Anna with an angry and desperate roar, ordering with an authoritative point of his leather finger. The woman took no offense. Instead, she quickly turned and ran back downstairs. The sound of Sybbie’s jewels rattled in their box with every step her lady’s maid sprang down, marking her path with descending echoes. George stood by for a moment, before turning to look up at the overlook gallery of the hall, sensing something amiss which sent a twinge to his trained sixth sense. He focused his sight on the edges of the corridors leading to the residential halls. The breath in his lungs held, and his fingers twitched in old instinct. He knew that something was there, someone, but he couldn’t say, nor could he react. For he knew, better than most, that the corridors of Brancaster were filled with many a secret and hidden door which Mirada Pelham’s creatures slinked and listened.

It would make this task infinitely harder.

There was a tittering of conversation which rose up and mixed together at the opulent ceiling to create an ambient pattern of noise that ebbed and flowed. A golden hue off the crystal chandeliers gave the regal emerald dining room a singular mineral effect upon the walls. It seemed, in décor, and positioning of such finery, that the large party of business and aristocratic guests were dining in the heart of a quartz rock. It was an important dinner of consequence which masqueraded as Lady Hexham and her Lady Mother, The Countess of Grantham, synchronizing their social books. In truth, this was a momentous moment for the future of the title of Marquess of Hexham.

For so long, since Bertie’s coma, Lady Edith had been frozen out of all business which Bertie had been privy too. The role had been usurped deftly and legally by Mirada, using her daughter-in-law’s shameful secret to cow her into control of the important leadership of the county, as well as the welfare of her son. But now that Mirada had been locked away by George, what had been rightfully Edith’s responsibilities all along had now fallen right back in her lap.

There was, of course, relief and uplifting of her heart to hear that she would have custody of Bertie again. Edith had mourned bitterly for years the loss of her husband to his shark of a mother. It was a choice between whom she could keep and who she would have to give up. It was a terrible choice between her secret daughter and her husband. But while Edith mourned the loss of Bertie, she would never, **ever** , give up her precious little girl again. Nor would she suffer Mirada Pelham to be alone with her for even a moment, not after what had happened between that woman and the children long ago.

They say Lady Hexham had bought her suffering for quite a cheap price, when everyone else would’ve gladly paid such small tribute as Mrs. Pelham offered for peace between them. But Edith would never betray her heart and her love by signing such an absurd and dangerous document that her mother-in-law placed in front of her after Rose and Atticus brought Bertie home on a stretcher from New York. Everyone had advised that she sign it, that they’d figure the rest out when the time came, but Edith would not do it.

Mirada snarled, threatened, and proclaimed a great truth that she said all agreed with. Bertie was beaten into a coma in New York by Pinkerton Detectives. They were mercenaries masquerading as lawmen. They had been after a dangerous outlaw at the direction of a Knickerbocker Senator from New York, whose old Gilded Age mamma ended up on the wrong side of a Webley Revolver. They told the Foreign Office that the Marquess of Hexham was attempting to aid and abed a known outlaw wanted by the Crown. The Pinkerton Detective Agency and the Democratic National Committee of New York had offered the House of Hexham compensation and all expenses paid for the medical care of Lord Hexham for the rest of time. All that Lady Edith had to do was condemn the criminal and surrender his whereabouts.

But Edith refused. She would never betray George under any circumstances. Her husband had left under no one’s wishes or favor, out of love, to go to New York under diplomatic privileges. He had been determined to rescue George, Rose, Atticus, and their children, to get them out of New York and danger. Edith would not spit upon the nobility of her husband by condemning, denouncing, and betraying the very young boy who Bertie had gone to save. And for that one act of selfless and enduring love, Mirada Pelham swore to wage unsleeping war upon Lady Edith till she had taken everything she held dear from her, as Lady Mary Crawley’s _‘little half-breed animal’_ had done to her.

Mirada had taken Brancaster and Bertie from Edith, and she nearly had taken Marigold - attempting to force Edith to claim maternity and ruin her forever. But they seemed hollow victories, fore, though she had the Castle, the county, and her son’s sleeping body, what she really wanted she could never have. As much as she tried, and nearly succeeded over the years, she could never have Marigold. It was a line in the sand that all the Grantham family guarded fiercely. But in the long battles that followed, ever increasingly did they damage Marigold internally, till some nights the young beauty was all nerves and fear.

It was well known that in times of great stress, Marigold retreated into her room, and would in turn begin to play with her immense collection of dollies. It seemed an odd business from those who knew that the teenage ballerina was long past the time which many would consider appropriate for a girl her age to be playing with toys. They’d often find her, quietly on the floor, setting up a tea party, petting her beautiful dollies hair and adjusting their dresses. Other times she’d sleep between Lord and Lady Grantham at night. And even at the age she was, they’d never deny her. Even when the troubles and court battles ended, the girl still feared being taken away. And she knew that the men from court would not and could not burst into a Countess’s bedroom, and thus it would give her time to escape, to flee and find George. She was convinced - and would be for the rest of her life - that as long as she was with George, that no one could hurt her. Both Robert and Mary often came down on Edith, seeing such mounting emotional damage to Marigold, wondering if such uncompromising loyalty to George was worth Marigold’s mental health. But Edith would not budge.

Neither would Marigold allow her too.

But after years of suffering and endless court battles, the plague of Mirada Pelham was at an end. And though the scars she left, especially upon Marigold, George, and most grievously on Sybbie, there was now an opening to put the past behind them. Brancaster Castle was now back in the rightful hands of Bertie and Edith Pelham. Their little girl, whose beauty made her seem like an elven princess of a castle, now truly fit the description. Ever at Edith and Marigold’s side was their family, who did not skip a beat in helping her generate a social and political buzz at the reinstatement of her appointment. Tom and Mary had invited many of their friends of business which might invest in the County. Lord and Lady Grantham knew just the right guests who would make the night a success for their daughter. They all helped to reintroduce Edith, with confidence, to society as the proper Marchioness of Hexham once more.

**BANG!**

The room of finely and glamorously dressed guests of aristocracy and business startled with flinches and gasps when the door to the dining room flew open. Springing from the breach was George Crawley, damp, hair slick and waved, and his eyes wide in determination and desperation. Robert cursed under his breath, tossing his napkin down when seeing his grandson. The youth quickly observed the room, seeming to see only who he wanted. Cora frowned from across her husband looking behind her to find her only blood grandson, her only boy, panting breathlessly in increasing disturbance of what he was seeing … or rather what he wasn’t. But to her only son’s presence, Mary simply squeezed her eyes shut and let out an embarrassed and deeply annoyed sigh. Only Tom Branson seemed to perceive that something was truly amiss. He understood, greatly, that it would take something truly terrible to bring his nephew to step foot in Brancaster Castle, as it also took Tom quite a bit of convincing from his sisters to get him to return to this place as well.

“George?!” Tom shot to his feet as did Robert when the boy quickly walked down the length of the table toward a shocked Edith.

“Darling …” Cora reached for his hand, but the young man slipped it from his granny’s grasp in passing. He didn’t stop tell he reached Edith. The woman had a mouth full of pudding which she swallowed half chewed with the cover of a napkin in her hand.

“Where is she?” George demanded. “Where is she?!” He shouted at a confused Edith.

“Steady on, sir!” One of the guests near Edith exclaimed.

“Darling … I don’t understand …” Edith frowned.

“George, if you will …” Robert was stern over a look of pure paternal steel at the way George looked, talked, and barged into a dinner of great formality.

The youth, however, checked the man when he held up a single index finger with a wordless death glare at his grandfather. “Where is she?!” the youth grabbed his aunt by the front of her dress and drew her to her feet. Edith’s spoon clattered on her plate, and several more men left their seats. But the Marchioness looked frightened, not of her nephew, but by the look in his eye. It was a maternal instinct that came intrinsically to those women who loved their children with every fiber of their being.

It was in that moment that she knew something bad had happened.

“If everyone might give us a moment …” Cora asked while standing up.

“No one leaves!” George counteracted his grandmother’s wishes as he aggressively balled the velvet bust of the dress and pulled the lovely woman, he loved like a mother, closer to him. “Where is she!” George snarled in Edith’s face.

“She’s sick … she said she wanted a tray.”

Everyone turned to find Sybbie standing, quickly rushing toward this youth she loved from the other side of the table. The sleek young woman wore a blue satin form fitting evening gown and her black curls were glossy in smooth ringlets that fell down her pallid bare back. The beauty looked on alert, fearful. Like her father, better than her father, she knew that George would not have lightly come here, not after what happened to Marigold, and especially what happened to Sybbie when they were children. If the man she loved most in the world was here, it meant that something was truly wrong. And she knew from his coarse belligerence – especially toward their Aunt Edith - it was very, **very** , bad.

“Marigold?” Edith suddenly questioned. “Why, wha … what’s happened, Darling?” She asked fearfully. “What’s the matter with Marigold?” She braced George’s damp leather shoulders desperately.

Just then more people grew audibly uneasy when the dapper figure of Thomas Barrow entered the dining room. The handsome man in valet’s suit had double barrel shotguns in each pale hand. He looked cold and professional, even under the duress of the strange orders. He had almost dismissed Anna as trying to pull some dark prank on him, flipping through a magazine, cigarette in hand. His cold eyes ever watching the remaining staff of the Pelham’s carefully. Like many in Downton, Thomas hadn’t seen what had happened here eight years ago, but he heard it firsthand from both Master George and Ms. Sybbie. And what he heard burned him deeply with detest. It wasn’t like Mr. Barrow to volunteer for Mr. Bates, to give the Bates’s any relief in their juggling of family and career. But the Butler of Downton Abbey had been waiting a long time to see Mirada Pelham’s staff be fired from their posts, to go without even a reference. It seemed cruel unless you knew and cherished the lovely young roses of the Crawley family. Then it seemed like a small justice in recompense for what they allowed to happen to those beautiful and precious little girls.

“Captain …” Thomas breathlessly came to George’s side completely obedient, as if he was in the army again, standing at attention.

“What in the blazes …?!” Robert exclaimed seeing his guns from the shoot being brought up to the dining room of all places.

George acknowledged the butler and his eldest friend with a grateful nod. The youth immediately began removing his gauntlets. Once he had, he took one of his grandfather’s guns with bare hand and immediately tossed it to Sybbie. In one display of chemistry in the smooth toss and catch with metallic clink it was shown - even after falling out - that there was no one in the room that either trusted more in the world. George immediately turned toward the butler.

“I want you to take Donk’s other gun and Uncle Bertie’s Valet and clear all the secret entrances and then seal them off. If you see Marigold bring her downstairs and lock her in the butler’s Pantry with yourself. You don’t open it for anyone but me. If Marigold is with someone, you separate them … by any means necessary.” He gave Thomas a knowing look as he ripped his goggles from his forehead.

“Sir …” Thomas gave George a strange look but, none the less, followed the orders given. He took Robert’s gun in hand and quickly stalked to the door.

“Thomas …” George called toward him.

“Captain?” The butler turned obediently.

For just a beat the boy looked much younger than he had ever before. It seemed that he might say something that was truly in his heart. For just a pause there was a sprinkle of a deeper friendship and parental attachment between the older man and the teenager. It was a break that didn’t come often in situations when George took command. But, as cold as it might have seemed, the boy had pawns and rooks, but Thomas Barrow was truly an irreplaceable piece on the board of his life which he wished not to risk. But George saw no choice at the greater consequence to someone more precious than any treasure in the world. In just one glance both knew what was at stake here, what was unspoken as to not panic a crowded room.

“Watch your corners, Old Man.” He nodded.

“As you say, sir.” He didn’t betray a tick of the soft glow of warmth and sorrow in the handsome butler’s lonesome heart in fond paternal feelings. With a cocky courtly bow, Thomas exited, cradling the Earl’s gun.

When he was gone, George slapped his blooded gauntlets and damp goggles down on the table with a wet smack. He began unlooping and then unwrapping his long scarf when he paused in a lingering glance around the room at everyone there.

“Damn …”

He said under his breath in stress of limited time. They watched in confusion as the youth unbuttoned his coat and began to shed it. He quickly turned, and, with a surprise, they saw that George draped the peacoat of beaten leather over Edith’s shoulders tenderly.

“You don’t take this off.” He warned protectively as he closed it snuggly over the bust of the golden-haired woman’s velvet gown. When he turned up the collar in the back, it seemed long forgotten that he had menaced and manhandled her.

His aunt frowned at the odd instruction, yet, from the moment he put it on her, she felt a tingle of warmth run down her breast. It was incredibly comfortable in a way that no garment ever had been. She found, as writer, that it was hard to find the description of just how … light she felt. It was as if a great weight had been taken off her that she never knew she had borne. The Marchioness couldn’t quite say it was magical, fore she didn’t really know what that felt like - in the most real sense of what she knew to be out there in the world. But there was certainly something about the garment which was singularly unique. There was a reason, beyond the notorious English weather, why George wore it everywhere like it was a second skin.

The coat – whose worth was greater than that of Grantham County, Downton Abbey, and all inside it – had been won in a battle of wits against one that the natives of Amahagger in Darkest Africa call ‘Hiya’ or "She-who-must-be-obeyed”.

Edith couldn’t help but think that the beaten and oil stained supple leather was of a hardier tanning than its countenance and feeling. The hide taken from a lordly creature of pre-history where mythology and science had once gone hand in hand. A place which once you see the very ruins of, your understanding of the world changes forever. All anyone had to do was see the artifacts and trophies of Crawley House’s study. The globe sized pearl, the Atlantean War Helm in glass display, and the swords upon the wall. It was no wonder why George could not find common ground with his family. Even the garment he wrapped her in – light as a shawl, as comfortable as a favored jacket, and hardier than a coat of Arthurian mail - was proof of this secret knowledge which made George Crawley the way he was. Fore knowing such things, didn’t just change one’s views of the world, but certainly enhanced one’s own sensitivity toward dangers that were not obvious, or even known to others.

The room made another titter of dissent when the youth drew his revolver from his back hip. The fascination that one had with ‘the Ray Gun’ in Downton, and in illustration on the pages of ‘The Sketch’, was not applicable to a High Society gathering. This, one of a kind, revolver was an unwelcome sight to those not expecting it. The sleek, futuristic, and streamlined weapon was intimidating and alien in every sense of the word to the many gentlemen who thought they knew guns. This mixture of craftsmanship, artistry, and science, retrofitted by the genius hands of a rebellious son from a line of Emperor’s swordsmiths, was unlike anything seen in the world. Even the sounds it made as it went through the air had the song of a blade rather than the blunted iron of a normal British revolver. 

They all watched as George opened the cylinder to check if he had a full complement of rounds. With a rather satisfying clinking noise when he snapped it shut one handed, he blew on the rifle cartridges inside and gave the cylinder a spin. Confident in his preparedness, he gave a tight gunfighter’s twirl of the weapon on a single digit. It seemed like he was showing off, but his grim face spoke against the accusation. Instead, his preparation was but proof of not only the young man’s skill with the weapon but his accustom to these terrible circumstances. 

He turned to Sybbie. “She doesn’t leave this room …” He motioned his head toward their aunt. “No one does!” He turned from the beauty and addressed all the guests twirling his gun backward into its Mexican holster smoothly. “You keep them here, and no one gets in and out till I come back.” He ordered Sybbie as he made to leave.

“What are you playing at now, George?” Mary mocked rancorously. “Are we in danger of being set upon by Mexican Bandits? Are Klansmen coming down the stone path with lynching ropes for Atticus, Tom, and yourself? Or are we in danger of something more fantastical? I’m sure Edith and Ms. Edmunds must be teaming with ideas for next month’s issue …” She swirled her drink. But the smile soon went away at the very withering look that her son gave her.

“Alright …” George recanted in modification. “Nobody leaves this room … except Anna Karenina over here.” He added turning back to Mary. “By all means go walking around, preferably alone, in the dark specifically … do us all a _fucking_ favor, huh?” He snarked with biting contempt of the pale woman. Mary glowered at the chastising look that Tom gave her, to which she shrugged, though deep in her red tinted dark eyes was a secret worry.

“Darling?!” Cora demanded of her boy trying to keep a calm demeanor with a snarl under her breath. She snatched George arm by his rolled-up sleeves. Her gripping vice wrinkled, even more, the white button down the youth wore over a navy-blue Henley long sleeve. She forced the youth to face her, searching his eyes, hoping, beyond hope, that he’d reveal that this was some elaborate prank on them. But she couldn’t find his tell in their matching eyes. Her only boy just wordlessly handed her his beloved scarf for safe keeping as he once done for his teddy bear when he was so very small.

It then occurred to Lady Cora Crawley, petting the soft material of the navy-blue scarf, that they were all in an incredible amount of danger at that very moment.

“What the devil is going on?!” Robert blustered, joining his wife at her side, breaking the wordless exchange between his wife and their heir. But all he had to do was meet the love of his life’s gaze to see that whatever was happening was not some joke. When he turned back to George, the youth looked on edge, set by his tone.

“Let me summarize for you.” He growled. He then pointed at a chair with a dark and fierce face which matched intensity with Robert. “Sit down!” He snapped with a snarl at the old man.

He then turned, leaving Robert seething in humiliation and contrary feelings as his wife braced his arm. It was clear to her and to Tom that George was disturbed by something, beyond being here. whatever he had seen, whatever had brought him here, weighed heavily on his mind with all its gruesome imagery. But it was more than that. For a month now, since whatever happened in Crawley House between him, Sybbie, and Marigold.

George had changed.

He was aggressive, darker, and much more violent. There was a new type of mean to “The Comet” that had only gotten worse since what happened at “The Stone Barn”. He seemed angry all the time now, increasingly cynical, and reclusive to all. Tom and Edith had tried to talk to him, but he would not admit them. Cora went down to Crawley House herself to set things right, as only a parent could, but he had not been there. She waited all day, till he returned blooded and bruised near dawn. When she exclaimed at his state, he told her that he didn’t need her theatrics, that she should save it for the Human Traffickers – they were in worse shape … ask the coroner. Then, he would not answer her when she asked a million questions. She stormed out frustrated and heart sick of the shadowy figure, reeking of vigilante violence, who sat in the dark study, staring into the unlit fireplace, not listening to a word she or anyone said to him.

She confessed in deep worry to Baxter that there was something wrong with him, that he was not himself. Maybe he met Robert, Mary, and the rest of High Societies ideals of who he was. But she knew that this dark, brooding, and angry young man was not George, not her boy. It was as if some greater evil was tormenting him, leading him onto dark paths that he strayed in his unending wrath at some terrible memory. It daunted and daunted him till his guilt consumed his mind at all times, like a reopened wound that had become infected. Then, he was perilous. His countenance was grim and brooding, his eyes darkened by circles, and their haunted look was tainted by a rage just held in check. And he scared his granny, knowing that if it could not be her, that he needed someone, anyone, or he might be lost forever.

Edith, once more, got to her feet and pursued George to the door that he was in the process of exiting.

“George, for God sake, what’s happened?!” She begged.

But she was halted when her nephew rounded on her. This time he didn’t manhandle her. The youth simply turned and stalked into her face with the angriest, damn near hateful, look that she had ever received in her life. Not even Mary - at her worst - had ever considered Edith with such a look of pure loathing as her nephew did in that moment.

“Haven’t you done enough for one lifetime?!” He asked rhetorically with venom.

In one glance a great cascading guilt of not just one, but so many sins came rushing over Edith. A jealous young woman scorned by Matthew who sent a letter to the Ottoman Empire’s embassy. A letter that had ruined her sister, kept her from the man she loved, and doomed her unborn nephew with a life-long bounty on his head.

She thought of finding that same nephew in New York after the Stock Market crashed, over a year later. A young boy, in despair, so grateful to see an adult after living alone for a year. Edith never thought she could ever love someone more in her life, and yet, she did him a great evil. Fore Edith had very little to do with finding him at all. It was Mary who used guile and sly craft as guest in many Great Houses during her ‘Royal Obligation’ as the Queen’s favorite ornament she liked to show off at parties. She had spent so many sleepless nights repenting forever the final words she had said to her son. Yet, it was by fates cruel joke that Mary, trapped in Buckingham Palace as a hostage, could not go to New York. Though, even more a humorous joke that Mary had begged Edith, a Marchioness with Bertie’s diplomatic privileges, to go to George. It was then that all Edith had to do was tell her nephew that it was his mamma who found him, it was Mary who wished him to know she still loved him.

But she didn’t …

Edith, in so many chances, always took the credit for finding George. She did not trust Mary at her word. And though her sister risked imprisonment, selling dearly her dignity, and even her body once or twice, so some in court could find George and keep it a secret from the Royal persons. But in Edith’s mind, even this was no guarantee that the ice queen of the Winsor Royal Court wouldn’t change her mind once she truly got to know this Americanized young adventurer. So, Edith had lied.

In doing so, she had made things so much worse between George and Mary. The boy never knew that his mother moved Heaven and Earth to pull him out of that horror, and Mary never knew that George was never told. Thus, both mother and son thought that the other had spurned them in their great need of one another. The backlash was great and terrible when she saw the last part of Mary’s world crumble under her when her sister truly believed that George outright rejected her vulnerable plea for reconciliation. Thus, it was, that every time that George and Mary slighted and cut one another face to face, Edith died just a little. Ever knowing that her lies and poor scheme was the cause for such toxic animosity between two people who were so desperate for one another’s love they’d kill each other just to end their shared languished longing.

She took George’s words deeper than a stab wound to her heart at the snarled hatred directed at her. The woman backed away slowly, knowing that whatever was happening, George blamed her for it. She only wished she knew which sin, out of so many, plagued her family this time. More so, she would never forgive herself if it was Marigold who was the target of retaliation for the short-sighted and adroitly challenged Lady Edith Pelham, Marchioness of Hexham.

A darling and glamorous pioneer of womanhood … who had never gotten a thing right in her entire life.

The Great Hall of Brancaster Castle was lit the same as it was when George had left it moments before. But this time the feeling in his gut was even more troubled. It was a sixth sense of a veteran of over two dozen engagements. It was like the sensation of the moments before one vomits. It was a rush of anxiety, all senses acutely aware of a coming deluge of great strain. He paused in the center of the glittering and alluring halls of the pinnacle of British Aristocracy. He knew that there was danger here, right on top of him. He felt dozens of eyes, painted, crafted, and sculpted upon him, looking through him. But there was only one pair which had the vision of the ferryman. He could feel the cold copper of the pennies, the fee for his transportation, in their grasp with every second. It was only a matter of finding them before they got the nerve to make their unseen move.

The only problem remaining was where would it come from?

“Honestly, my darling, if you wanted to make a splash …”

“Get back!”

**CRACK!**

**CRACK!**

The beating heart of the young man nearly flopped out of his mouth onto the rugs of the floor. The moment he turned to find the silken vision of the beautiful Lady Mary Crawley with styled tresses of rich chocolate hair, black choker, and ruby strapless mermaid dress, he felt the hit coming. In such a tense moment, a woman wearing such a shiny satin evening gown, might as well have put a target on herself. He moved quickly, feeling the vibration of the first shot knock the literal stuffing out of a cushioned sofa in the common area. He immediately hooked his mother by her slender waist to his chest and hid them behind a column. He crushed her sleek frame against him, holding her tightly from behind as the second shot warped against the ancient stone, causing a cloud of sediment to hang in the air. The ricochet bounced right through the corner of a portrait of a Duke’s Illegitimate daughter in Victorian riding dress.

His mother looked terrified, her eyes large as saucers as she stood with her bare back crushed against his front, both hunched over together. George protected every square inch of Lady Mary. A third shot fired, caused Mary to flinch hard against him when an entire section of stone gave way near their heads. Bits of debris dusted George’s hair and filmed the bare shoulder of the lovely pale woman.

“Shit!” George cursed sharply.

Snapping his head to the side, he was still unsure where the fire was coming from. But he knew that if the gunner was as good as he heard, the next shot was going to get one of them. Spying another obstruction near them, he sucked in a deep breath, counting till all his nerves were on fire. Then, in one swift and smooth motion, he swept Lady Mary off her feet and into his arms. He sprang away at the last moment. The fourth shot made another warped sound when it hit the stone floor, cutting a path where George’s shoulder once was.

Holding tightly to him, Mary wrapped her black silk covered arms around George’s neck as he bridal carried her at a sprint for a servant’s out cove. There was no fifth shot as the teenager ducked into the cover of the shadowy hall. Sweeping around, putting his back to the wall, Mary’s feet and train of her mermaid gown swept a tea tray over on an end table, causing the china to clatter on the floor. As consequence, the fifth shot tore away a section of the corner of the wall. Instinctually Mary pulled George’s head away, burying his face into the crook of her neck, folding her arms around his head defensively. She hadn’t realized what she was doing till George shook his head, struggling out of her protective embrace.

“Knock it off!” he snarled at her. There was somewhat of a mortified look in her shocked and frightened eyes.

“I’m sorry.” She breathed. Though, she noticed that her gloved hands were cupping his cheeks. She quickly removed them as he sidled against the wall and peaked over. When he came back, George thumped the back of his head against it as Mary’s amber eyes bore into him, his breath stinging her cheek.

“That’s five shots …” He whispered breathlessly to himself more than to the woman in his arms.

“How many does he have?” Mary whispered shakenly.

“That’s a Webley Mark Two …” He answered. “Sergeant’s issued sidearm, African Theater, six shots.” He nodded. “Got one slug left.” He said observing where they were. “I could get them to waste it, and fire back, but I don’t know where its coming from.” He said in annoyance.

“Forget it, just stay here till the police arrive.” Mary advised with a harsh whisper.

“Even if Anna or Baxter called, it’ll take them half-an-hour to get here … and Marigold is still up there.” He shook his head.

Seeing something that caught his eye, the youth moved. They saw that it was a servant’s secret door which led below. Mary, without being asked, twisted and jerked the knob with black silk gloved hand in disappointing result. George, in turn, gave it two rams of the back of his shoulder, while Mary used her dangling legs to kick it in congress, but both of their combined effort remained fruitless.

“Damn it …” George sighed with one last angry thump. “Of all the days for Thomas to actually obey the letter of his orders.” The youth gave a mirthless chuckle. 

“It does seem to be our luck.” the woman tried a jiggle of the knob before sharing the roughest of smiles with her child as she wrapped her arms around his neck again.

In that freeze frame of a second, the world, momentarily, fell away.

He remembered it so clearly on the last night of Caroline’s life. They had all stayed up through that week before, watching over the baby, praying that the medicine would come soon. Henry, Thomas, and Lady Mary had all taken shifts watching over the baby. George had helped the best he could. He had brought coffee, tea, some cold water to wash a tired face. He even took over sometimes when someone needed to use the toilet. But he would always remember waking up that last night while keeping watch to make sure the medicine worked. He didn’t remember falling asleep, only that he was reading to the baby and then he was somewhere else. It was dark, the snow was falling outside the window, the flakes’ silhouettes cascading down the wall. But he found that while he was on his own bed, his head wasn’t resting on a pillow.

He looked down to see that his head was cushioned against Lady Mary’s sleek belly. He was shocked even further to see that she was wide awake, staring unblinkingly at him. Her eyes illuminated by the snow’s glow from outside. He thought she’d be fast asleep, reassured by the medicine’s arrival, but instead she had carried him to his room and draped him over her. George could still remember her hand threading through his blonde curls. In that time, he had no idea what she wanted, what she was thinking, or why she had plucked him from the nursery. She didn’t seem herself, and yet, he had no doubt that it was his mother in full. He studied her for a long time, while she traced his cheekbone with the back of her fingers. It was as if she had never touched anyone before, the way she stroked and petted him cherishingly.

The woman, living in two weeks of absolute torment, seemed to need some sort of respite from toil and fear. And so, she did what she secretly enjoyed above all things. Lady Mary dearly loved the feeling of her son, of Matthew’s only child, against her, of his warmth against her skin. For so long she had feared it, feared the notions of that longing, fore her mamma nor papa were ever so close. And the only person in her family who had been, came later in teenage years, and dark was the relationship that a nubile young Lady had been convinced was special beyond her doubts and discomforts in bed and bathtub. Ever did she feel guilt, because, for all the horror of the fallout and the fear of the first time it happened, ever somewhere inside, she thought she loved it.

The attention, the adoration, and the obsession over her was all she truly wanted. Worst of all was the gleeful mischievous flame inside of her, knowing it was wrong, and brooding alone over what had happened afterward. But all those doubts did not linger, nor obscure the devilish anticipation of posing on the bed, in the tub, waiting for their secret knock, and the doorknob to turn. She was only ashamed of the grin on her face as he began undoing his trousers, just enough, and got closer. It was only afterward, after washing her face, when he left, that she’d lean back in the tub, or lay down on the bed, and feel truly sick. Knowing that he should not have made her watch him do that. But she let him. And always with a mischievous smirk and deep fascination as he did it, giving a Cheshire and teasing grin when her name was on his lips in a groan when he reached his limit.

For a time, she felt absolved from that guilt, having revealed to Matthew of all that happened and how it cursed the title that he’d bear someday. And in the arms and wisdom of a husband that was, thankfully, the opposite of who she strove her whole life to marry, Matthew had counseled with love and assurances. He claimed that it was no fault of a fifteen and sixteen-year-old girl of what the sick Old Earl – a grandfather – did to her. Yet, in retrospect, so far removed now from that night in Southern France, how deeply flawed and damaged she had become without her beloved Matthew’s council on matters of love. The simple longing and needing of her son’s touch were poisoned by a great fear of affliction by the same dark sickness which nearly destroyed her family and forever salted the earth for any love between Edith and her. Not after a nosy teenage girl had told their mamma of what she saw when she went to get something from the bathroom.

Finally, George remembered her gently lowering his head back against her satin covered belly, gently stroking his hair and massaging his back till he fell asleep against her again. For years he thought it had just been a dream. The odd weather, the odd circumstances, and the vulnerable intimacy of that beautiful woman’s deep eyes spoke to anyone in the world that, surely, had not been the cold Lady Mary.

But in this very moment, with her in his arms, she was looking at him that same way again. And he would’ve done anything to cherish it, to cherish her, if he was not reminded of a competing memory that was as singularly ingrained in his blood. 

In the aftermath of the Rebellion, Lady Mary Crawley had been stripped of her right to the estate and its profits. In turn, what was not wiped away was the debt she had placed the county. As such, her only saving move was to surrender herself as Captain George Crawley’s captive and press her right to ransom as a gentlewoman – as was ancient law. She would lose her autonomy, return to a very junior status in Society, and her life would be ruled by George. But she would avoid imprisonment – in the official sense. Her freedom and ransom would be tied to the debt of which she would be forced to pay out of her own pocketbook by her retained rights of “Branson and Talbot Motors” profit share. Then, and only then, would she be released, and her privileges be restored.

To this, she was heard saying that she’d rather choose death.

Yet, turning hatefully to the woman, George had grabbed her close and snarled that if she believed that she could end her miserable life on her own terms in this moment of her ultimate failure, she was sadly mistaken. George claimed, in a terrifying wrath, that no one had the right to take Lady Mary’s life - not even Mary herself. He claimed that in the end it would not be old age, it would not be sickness, nor mistake in life’s folly that would kill Lady Mary Josephine Crawley. Whether tomorrow or in twenty years, it would be George, and no other, who had the right to end his mother’s life. She could count on that.

And, if it was so, that Lady Mary Crawley found enough pride or contrarian temperament to cheat George of his justice … death would not bring her peace. Then, with grim and wild eyes that pierced her very soul, he swore a fell and dark oath right there, for all to see. He met her scowl with a cowing vow that he’d chase her from every nimbus of Heaven, through Purgatory, and all nine Circles of Hell. He’d ford across the silvery streams of the Infinite to the gates of the Timeless Halls, and past it to the very Void where nothing remains. No matter where Mary Crawley ran in life or death, she would never, **NEVER** , be rid of him.

Afterward the beautiful bride stood wide-eyed and silent, inches from her son’s face. There was not a Rebel standing there that victorious night, who would gainsay such a claim made on his mother’s very soul. There seemed nothing left to say. From that day the calls for the death of the awful tyrant stopped. While Mary Crawley saw no alternative, shocked and dumbfounded by such a vow of hatred and rage. Seeing in her child, for the first time, the darkness that fermented for ten years from the one awful decision she made long ago. There would be no lynch mob, there would be no cold iron bars, nor the London Office of “Branson and Talbot Motors” and Lady Rosamund’s Belgravia House. There was only a simple nod of consent to such terms while amber eyes stared deep into their child’s very soul. Then, sweeping her off her feet, George Crawley carried Lady Mary away from the crowd in the great hall of Downton Abbey to Crawley House as if claimed property … and none hindered their passing.

Now, in this incredible moment of stress and danger, with death but a false move away, the two memories of Lady Mary’s eyes, of her being held protectively in his arms, dueled and flittered like fencing blades in his heart and soul.

This time George hadn’t even thought twice about saving her. He had grabbed her, shielded her, and carried her in his arms to safety. Even now he was reluctant to set her down, unsure of her fate without him to protect her from even the ground they tread. It was a simple answer that he was not willing to accept, even when it was staring him in the face. It was an instinct, compulsion, developed in Hooverville’s and hobo fires in many places of a Depression stricken country. In struggles, toil, and danger, George Crawley took in hand what was most valuable to him and guarded it with his very life. It was why the boy held Sybbie so close in bed, spooning her tightly to him when they slept together. It was why George did not like strangers in his home, or for people he didn’t know to touch his things. And it was why his most fundamental instinct was to carry Lady Mary out of danger and hold her to him tightly.

But were his actions out of the purity of love for a mother, or in hateful possessiveness of a foe’s life which only he was allowed to take?

It was only by a dashing shadow in the corner of his eye that broke the long stare down. It pained him, almost physically, but he set Mary back down on her feet. Though unlike the usual, both were not so quick to separate. His arm lingered about her silky hip as she continued to stare at him with eyes as intense as floodlights. However, sensing the intimate and confused spellbound energy, George dashed to the damaged wall, drawing his weapon with a flick of leather. Meanwhile, Mary backed away, playing with her pearls nervously over the emotions pouring over her like molten fire the closer she was to George.

“Someone is out there …” He whispered. “In a moment, I’m going to draw fire. You stay right here and when I say ‘now’ you run back for the dining room …” He turned. “And if you ever pull this shit again, I’ll kill you myself!” he said in an anger of stress and fear of losing the last parent he never once thought he had. But this time Mary didn’t match anger with anger, nor blasely dismiss her child’s temper. She only nodded obediently, looking teary eyed, swallowing nervously.

“Get ready …” George whispered. Mary slipped off her high heels and padded to George’s side.

“Knock it off!” he hissed at her.

Mary hadn’t realized, till he shrugged out of her hold, that the first thing she did was wrap around his arm constrictively and burrowed into his side. She backed away apologetically. Then, George quietly drew the click of his trigger, cocking the revolver’s hammer back. But he paused, turning slowly with an annoyed glare at his mother whose chin had found itself on his shoulder, her body pressed to his back, boxing him to the wall protectively with her silk gloved arms wrapped around his chest. He brought his forearm across Mary’s cleavage and used it to push her off and behind him. Mary bit her lip and looked apologetic, once again playing with her pearls with her back to the wall.

The moment that George moved, Mary’s hands shot out in reaction, touching his back shoulders. It was an instinct to grab him and pull him away from danger and back into her waiting arms. There was something terribly wrong about the prospect of a child, her child, risking his life to protect her. Even with a deep history of resentment and anger she couldn’t stop herself from wishing to do all in her power to protect him from his very nature which was so frustratingly authentic to all the stories she dismissed roundly for months and years.

If Matthew hadn’t been dead already, she might have rung his neck for that perfect and passionate skinny dip at the “Pools of the Lady” in the Haunted Forest after the village cricket match. If she had known that it would’ve led to this moment, to the creation of this moody, temperamental, and unimpeachably valiant young man, she’d tell her beloved that she was simply too tired for ‘that’ kind of fun. But, then, who was she kidding? She’d never repent, even in the halls of the deepest circles of Hell itself, for the things done, said, and felt every moment Matthew Crawley was inside of her.

George moved swiftly from hall and back to damaged column, taking an obscured angle into the shadows from the golden lights. He saw the figure moving at hobble for the servant’s staircase. They were moving as fast as they could. With his head on a swivel, his heart hot with the fight in his coursing blood, it seemed to him that there was never a guiltier looking party in his life - whomever it was. The youth reacted quickly, striding into the open behind a Kevlar sofa which had already absorbed a revolver bullet. His swift movement caught the figure unawares, coming unseen at their side. They quickly turned in startle when they felt his presence.

He was tall and rotund, with a face sweating and pained.

The sounds that the butler of Brancaster would’ve and could’ve made seemed too endlessly varied to know as his voice was caught in his throat. It was a nightmare that the man had constantly for eight years. He was fully aware that George Crawley had wanted to kill him. Or, in fact, that he wanted to finish the job he started. It was only by lucks happenstance that an eight-year-old boy had not thought, not once, of delivering a death blow. Fore, though, George Crawley knew all about death, he knew nothing of taking a life. Yet, had the boy been only a few short weeks older, had he known, in full, what had been happening, or the consequences of such, he would’ve killed the butler right there and then.

It was like he had strayed into a dream, the worst possible one he could imagine. Now, George Crawley, famed for many impossible and dangerous feats, held him at gun point with his futuristic weapon. This young man, above all, knew damn well what had happened here, and had seen firsthand what it did to both little girls later in life. But, most poisonously, the things done and seen in Brancaster eight years ago was but a spark which led a young boy to a grievous folly in New York one Halloween Night that even he knew not yet the extent of. Though the guilty party of that terrible event, Mirada Pelham, was unhappily safe in Carfax Asylum, the man who guarded and watched the door while she did evil, was still here. Like a sitting duck, he was waiting for the young fighter to come back, to reflect on childhood horrors and seek justice for one whose sin was not committing an act of evil …

But doing everything in his power to help it.

When he raised his hands, the pen was still impaled in his palm. But still he could not find the words to ask for mercy at the very dark look that came over George’s eyes. The lights from the portraits on the wall of the Great Hall of Brancaster glinted and shined off the chrome finish of the streamline steampunk weapon pointed at the large blackguard’s heart. It was eight years of nightmares, the guilt of twin boys born dead, and a little girl exposed to things which nearly destroyed her later in life. All of it swirled in a young boy, arm in sling, forehead bandaged, who swore to his family’s butler and his mother and best friend’s lady’s maid that he’d kill the man who allowed it all to happen. Now he had him here, alone, with an excuse to finally make him pay for the very selling of his soul to a hypocrite.

“Watch out!”

**CRACK!**

A blur of ruby satin and porcelain pale skin leapt off her petite feet and collided with George just as his finger touched the trigger of his gun. The boy was tackled back first to the plush Persian rug behind the sofa. Just then, where George had been standing was felled by a bullet which whizzed by and obliterated a marble statue head of the Greek Goddess Hera. For a moment the youth had lost all sense of direction as a sleek woman lay on top of him, clutching him tightly, her pale cleavage pushed against his face. His entire upper body was being shielded, blanketed by her frame which clung to him in terrified protection.

“Damn it, woman!” George snarled at Lady Mary whose defending arms were once again wrapped around his head like a jungle Python’s vice.

Eventually, he was able to pull Mary lower, so that the side of his cheek was pressed to the base of her neck. This time he knew exactly where the gunfire was coming from. He expertly drew his revolver up, aiming for the overlook above from a lying position. The figure above moved quickly from his aim, just a split second before he pulled the trigger, protectively pulling his mother’s head down bracingly.

**CUNGPH!**

The weapon that the mercenary bandits of the former revolutionary army of Pancho Via fearfully called ‘EL Cañón De Mano’ echoed distinctively through the great hall. It boomed like an artillery piece in the hollow and vast room of Brancaster Castle, causing Mary’s body to flinch hard against George. It’s shot reverberating audibly down halls and wings of the palatial seat of power in Northern England. The force of the rifle caliber bullet shattered a portion of the handrail on the over-look of the gallery above. Ancient stone rained down in crumbling impact force, clouds of sentiment hung in the air, slowly descending into the golden lights which illuminated vases and paintings below.

“Screwy bitch!” George roared up at the gallery, judging that his shot had just barely missed his intended target.

A woman whose identity he had known since before arriving.

He saw the tall silhouette shrinking as they retreated toward the east wing of the castle. He lowered his gun as he lay there for a beat, panting under the stress of the split-second firefight. He laid his head down on the rug to catch his breath. He turned to find himself completely shielded by a slender woman in tight satin of a mermaid evening gown. His mother had both her arms wrapped around his neck, crushing herself to him, her chin buried almost painfully onto the top of his head. Shaking breaths were hissing above him, the woman’s hands were alternating from petting his curls to cupping the back of his head bracingly.

His first instinct was to retort to the woman that not only wouldn’t she stop a bullet like this, but she would be dooming both of them to death … with his face buried in her lopsided vampire tits. He couldn’t think of a more humiliating, and yet, oh so fitting, death for the two of them - all things considered. But when he felt her breast shaking against his collar bone, he just sighed, knowing that these situations were as far as it got from Lady Mary Crawley’s world. With a strained grunt at his inability to sit up, he gave a stroke to Mary’s bareback with tenderness, cupping his warm palm over her pale shoulder blade.

“Alright …” George sighed. But his mother did not move, she only clutched to him harder. “Alright!” the youth got slightly annoyed as he propped himself onto an elbow.

He was momentarily caught in a flash of an impossibly young boy being carried by a mother who dressed him to match her in masculine whenever they went out together. It was the same tight and encompassing embrace, every part of himself, even his being, was held in possession of a woman who liked to bury her face in his little chest and nuzzle it when no one was looking. Never had he felt more safe or secure than in the complete mastery of his beautiful mamma’s arms. Now he felt it draconianly oppressive as every part of himself was shielded and covered by Lady Mary’s forever, all-encompassing, embrace.

“Get off!” George grunted.

In agitation, he gave the woman’s well utilized rump in skintight satin a couple of claps to shock her back to her senses. The foreign sensation and bracing impropriety of the uncouth and bawdy action caused the pale woman to snap to attention. She loosened her grip enough for the youth to sit up. Absorbing Mary’s glare, the youth only grunted as he pulled his mamma up with him, sitting her across his lap, her arms still folded around his neck.

Her head turned to the railing to see the hole which was still crumbling in spots from deep aftershock fractures. She then glanced to the gun in her son’s hand in disbelief. Lady Mary Crawley had never believed in the nonsense of ‘The Ray Gun’, the retrofitted weapon that Matthew had once carried on the Somme and Sybil carried in her coat pocket from Downton to Ireland, and back again.

“You alright?” George asked breathily.

He winced at his first reaction which was to smooth back her ‘peek-a-boo’ locks of rich chocolate with his free hand. He caught himself when she leered dark eyes over to watch the action with a deeply intimate stare.

“Isn’t that my line?” There was something arrogant, superior … and flirtatious in her voice.

Her look triggered a deep conflict in the youth whose cheek her breath stung.

Lady Mary had lay in Matthew and George’s room all the evening after the loss of the Civil War. She had contented herself watching Sybbie sleep. The only solace found on that long endless night was knowing that she had never seen her little girl rest as deeply or as peacefully in eight long years. But, later, in the grey cold of winter’s morning she walked down, still wearing her wedding gown. There, in the study, she found George sitting in Matthew’s old chair, staring at the low burning fire. He looked worn and wild - most of a month on the march from the Scottish Highlands to Downton, and right into three days of battle. He had barely eaten for a week. His life had been ruined twice, his hand had been forced, and many were dead … and all because of her.

He did not flinch when the ring of a fire poker echoed through the study. He did not watch as she heated it in the fire. But his attention was drawn when she offered him the handle of the glowing hot instrument. Taking it blankly, he watched as a distraught and broken looking woman suddenly removed her wedding gown, her slip, and silky lingerie. There was no emotion in his frigid glance as Mary stood naked in front of him, her eyes teary, her face joyless and cold. Then, she turned and braced herself against the fireplace mantle were Matthew and her own wedding photo stared at her. She offered her pale smooth back, her perfect hind end, and long milky legs. The youth, however, only stared at the heated end of the rod.

He knew what she wanted of him in that moment.

Ten years, ten long years, she had waited for this moment. Lady Mary could not live with herself any longer. She had destroyed her children, she had destroyed her family home, and she had done it all with an arrogant entitlement to such cruel folly. Now she had none of it. All that was left was the cold and empty void in her heart that had consumed everything. She had hoped that her end would come, that someone, anyone, would put her out of her misery after three days of war. The churls had enslaved her to their evil will, they had raped her little girl in front of her, and they tormented her people and tenants. And it took a bloody purge of battle on her own beloved land and estate, countless dead, to drive them from a home she offered to them willingly. What was left to salvage? If George would not kill her, then let him torment her, give her pain to think of. She needed, no, _had_ to be punished for her wickedness. The fields of mangled corpses left strewn on her family’s own woodlands, barrows, and moors. Lady Mary had done this! She had! She was the one that had ruined George’s life, she was his curse, his albatross! Let him strike her, let him ruin her, break her till she could not remember who she was! Fore in that moment, no one could or would hate Lady Mary Josephine Crawley more than she did herself.

In this, she did not flinch when the youth stood. Yet, her eyes fluttered closed pleasurably when she felt a warm palm on her bareback, skin against skin, and the tingle of searching fingers down the outline of her spine and shoulder blades as if following a trail on a map. The pallid face of the woman scrunched in old emotions at the memory of an old love - the feeling of her child’s warmth against her milky skin. Cherishing his slow exploration, she clenched in waiting for the other shoe to drop, the moment when he would stick her with the hot iron. But he didn’t, he only petted and massaged her, like someone reacquainting themselves with a tactile sensation long forgotten. She sighed when a thumb massaged the base of her spine on her taught lower back. His hand swept across and rested on her hip. Feeling his strong grip steady her, she arched in flinch when she felt the super-heated end of the poker be lifted just above her perfect and milky bottom. Squeezing her eyes shut, she waited for him to place it against the firm cheeks, to brand her as she heard he had done his foes in New Orleans and Mexico. But instead she heard him spit and there came a fizzle.

Then, slowly, he fell back. 

For a long moment, she stood shivering in the absence of his body warmth, and in the contentment of her nerves at his gentle massaging touches. But when she heard a metal clatter, she turned her head to see that George had tossed the poker back into the metallic netted holder. She whirled around and followed him with her deep amber gaze as he slowly sat back in Matthew’s chair and did not glance at her. A single tear fell down her milky cheek at his tired expression. It seemed all she needed to know about what had been going through as she offered herself to his vengeance.

Whatever had flooded his mind, it took all of his strength not to do just one of many things he had dreamt of for ten long years at the prospect of having that cruel, cold, and evil Great Lady in his grasp and at his mercy. Instead, he looked thoroughly worn, years taken off his life, in an explosion of emotions and pain that she did not see as he paced behind her. Then, he slowly leaned his head back onto the leather head rest, and stared at the fire, as one who had been relieved of a heavy burden.

There was a strange sense of mortification and yet, endearment, that swelled in a wholesome part of her heart … whatever was left of it.

He did not look as she slowly slid on her silky knickers and pulled over her liquid satin slip. She had collected her gown and brassier and was in the process of leaving the room, when she looked back. Her heart stirred in a sorrow so deeply felt that she did not know how to comprehend. For, George Crawley looked much of how he had that terrible Christmas Eve morning long ago. The anger, the rage, and the hatred had fell from his heart when he spared Mary’s flesh. Now, there was nothing left of what kept him going for so long. Without the driving force of revenge against his mother, there was only the untenable grief of what was lost: a sister, a childhood, and innocence of the world. Without anger there was only sadness. And it was a grief that touched Mary’s soul in the bereaved eyes of her child as he stared into the flickered dying flames.

It was simple, courteous, and done with a wholesome and unspoken instinct of a love so deeply ingrained that it was hardly noticeable. Setting her brassier and silk wedding gown on the study desk, she went to George’s fine leather pack on the side table. There, she drew out a blanket of greyish blue, fringed and well used after nine years of travel and adventure. Quietly, unrolling it and unfolding it, she padded over to where George sat. He did not look up at her as she gently placed the blanket over him as if he was still the seven-year-old boy that she did not want to wake. Making sure it was snug and comfortable, she turned to leave. But as she did, she felt a hand take hers.

Whirling slowly around she saw that George had stopped her from going, though he did not look at her. Gently, she allowed herself to be led till she was in front of him. Then, with a softened look on her face, she did not need to be asked. Soundlessly, she slid upon his knee, throwing her legs over his lap. With all the confusion and heartbreak of a lost child, the young victorious captain allowed himself to be a boy again. He wrapped his arms around Mary’s waist and buried his face to her bosom as he embraced her tightly.

The woman was drawn to his touch and found, in her lowest moment in her entire life, salvation in a tarnished and terribly damaged love that had yet to have been broken. The woman hugged the youth’s head to her and nuzzled his perfect raven locks, laying her cheek atop his scalp. In one moment, in one instance, all that had befallen a young man in the last ten year, duels, battles, horror in halls of stone, the death of a baby sister, all that was contemplated was fended off by the simple love in a mother’s embrace.

They would not reconcile, they would not learn in those three months to like, or even tolerate, each other. Nor could some things in the past decade be forgotten, nor even forgiven. But it was then, in Matthew Crawley’s study, for just a shining glimmer, there was hope between Mother and Son. 

But, then, the black poisonous thorn burrowed deeper in his heart at a different memory of the same look she gave him.

In the day after her wedding shower party, in the cold mid-afternoon in the late autumn of 1935, she watched him as he stood and pulled on his Henley. It hurt, more than she would ever care to admit, that he didn’t look at her. He would leave her to find her own way back to their Aunt Rosamund’s house. It seemed to her that he would, in fact, never see her again. That in this would be their final meeting before Civil War. Maybe this would be their final moment together forever. But there were no words, no acknowledgments of what had happened. Perhaps, they had been sure that someone, maybe both, would take what they had done that night to their grave in the war to come. But still, as he reached for the doorknob, he turned back to the woman watching.

But she was moved by the lightening of grim and haunted eyes, that had been so unrelenting and determined all night and in the morning. Now, at that final glance, knowing what lay ahead of them. The youth seemed rather a young man his own age, perhaps younger, in a sudden softness and vulnerability that he had not shown to her while she was in his arms and he in her warm embrace. His voice was quiet but humble.

 _“I … I didn’t hurt you, did I?”_ He had asked.

The woman’s own eyes fell and there was a strange emotion that turned them glassy.

 _“No …!”_ She exclaimed with a frown. _“Of course not. You were … it was …”_ She looked away a moment. Then something caring came over her pallid and beautiful countenance. _“It was perfect.”_ She had shaken her head and shrugged a bare shoulder while a deeply intimate gaze fell upon him.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Your Worship. This isn’t over yet.”

George suddenly shoved Mary off his lap and onto the rug rudely. The woman glared offendedly at the forced humility of the action as George got to his feet, dusting himself off by instinct rather than necessity. Perhaps brushing away the evil memory and not dust at all. He never took his eye off the gallery, even stooping down and hoisting Mary off the floor by her sleek hips.

When she found her feet, she caught his gaze again. There was an impasse in their shared instant of connection. Neither one knowing what to say to one another. It was another episode of what had happened before with George’s hand still on her hip. They had touched one another, been too close, and now, with all their hearts, they wanted to remain in one another’s embrace. They were being driven by chemistry and soul to come together in a chaste love that most people had with loved ones without thinking about it. But for two people so bitterly at odds most of the time, who had spent most of ten years apart, who missed formative years of development and childhood, their emotional state was remedial and confused.

They hated the very breath of one another. And yet, their hate was fueled by the undying love which was like poison in their veins. It slowly killed them from the inside in their longing of what most mothers and children took for granted. So, they strangled in the passions of contradiction and angry need to selfishly implant themselves in the other’s life. The rage of being so close, of feeling the ghost of that love they both seek in the warmth of a random embrace. It tormented them into a fey madness which was directed at the very heart of their beloved adversary which defined their very existence. A host of misunderstandings, deep seeded resentments, and a dead baby girl, was but a cover for the gregarious self-hatred of a woman who longed too deeply for a lost boy who she forgot how to love properly. Thus, the circle of anger and torment continued, with flirting and fighting, and then deep inner tantrums of blinding rage of how much they loathed the unescapable need of one another’s love. And when it was over, they’d find themselves here again, staring into one another’s eyes, desperate for a love that was hardwired into their very souls …

But it was a love they would never allow themselves to yield to, not in the memories of a dark and unforgivable sin they committed.

“Lady Mary, are you alright?”

Mary and George’s stare down had been broken by a Lord of a small Sussex barony. He was slender and upright, with greying temples, but impeccable hair. There was a sense of gentlemanly gallantry to his stalwart appearance as he came onto the scene. This minor Lord, with much investible capital to be persuaded by the Marchioness of Hexham, was everything that represented Lady Mary Crawley’s life. In that moment of madness, when both gazed at one another, short of breath from a deluge of emotions. A great and ugly malice possessed George upon seeing the very image of everything he wasn’t, which this woman, whom he hated with all his love, cherished above all things.

But what stoked the fire greater was the insinuation that his mother was not safe with him. Sure, there was a mad woman on the loose shooting at people. But no, it was George Crawley, with longing eyes and hand on her hip, who was the _real_ danger here to their queen, Lady Mary. He gritted his teeth in a rush of adrenaline and madness. He stepped away from his mother and pointed his weapon right at the older man whose eyes grew bug like.

“I know someone who is definitely not going to be alright if they don’t get their narrow ass back into that _fucking_ dining room!” He roared at the man in pent up aggression from the fight and danger on hand. The hatred in his voice, not for the man, but for everything he represented, was palpable under the gaze of his mortified mother.

“Dear God, you’re mad!” The man exclaimed with a startle away from George’s footsteps.

“Test me, Nigel!” He pulled the hammer back, showing his overwhelming Americanization by hanging derogatory nicknames for British people on the man. “You haven’t scratched the surface!” He gestured toward the peer with his weapon, his teeth bared. The Lord only spared a glance at Mary before fleeing back to the dining room. “And you tell Sybbie, that if she doesn’t control those bleeders in there, I’m gonna start stacking their miserable corpses up right here in the goddamn foyer for cover, like sandbags!” He yelled after the man as he fled back inside and shut the door.

If Lady Mary was at her peak as a British Aristocrat, then George was at his peak of being who he was in tense and dangerous situations. He was aggressive, angry, foul mouthed, and in full command. There was a dark weight on his heart and mind as he stalked aggressively away from the dining room and made straight for the stairs. But before he departed, the youth locked eyes with a frightened and shocked Mary as he passed. His face was inches from hers, his eyes crazed and shadowed in violent purpose. He did not tell her to go back to the dining room, nor warn her away. There were no words, just an accusatory and hateful look as he passed her and sprang up the steps in pursuit of the woman who had almost killed them. Mary rubbed the goosebumps off her arm as her eyes glassed over watching him go.

George Crawley was done hiding, playing games, and holding back. It was many factors that had hit at the right moment of circumstance and location which carried him into the bowels of Brancaster on an ill wind. There were many swirling feelings that had possessed and drove him into this madness. His family was under threat, the girl he loved was in danger, the overwhelming weight of the things he saw that evening, and ever the dark origins of many terrible things that was born in these halls. All of them set the youth past on edge and straight to certifiably deadly. There were plenty of demons hiding behind the corners of many columns that looked familiar to him. But Brancaster Castle would always be tainted by what had happened here.

There was a crossroads of fate and doom that every person reaches in their life. It was by some cruel fate, the marring of the world, that it is the dark and terrible things that happen in life that define it, influence it, much more than the joyous. And every young person in life, every child, builds a corner stone in their minds from some traumatic event which influences their understanding of the world and builds inescapable prejudices within them. An abusive parent, a bully, humiliation, simply a bad experience. All of them trying for adults, but grossly, pungently, poignant to a small child who learns something of the world which first hurts them in a new way.

For the children of the House of Grantham, it was within the halls of Brancaster which the great follies of their lives were first bred.

* * *

** Entr'acte Music **

[ _“Walk Through the Fire” – Sarah Michelle Gellar_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4OYKjG6I6A)


	9. Of Guinevere and Lancelot - Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! This and the Next Chapter will be rated M for extremely dark themes and gore ... You have been warned.

There was a cavernous thunder of complete silence that fell over the halls of the second-floor wing of Brancaster. It had been eight years, but it felt like it was yesterday. The same hall, the same decorations, the same smell. The only thing that was missing was the screams and pleading of little girls, and the overwhelming odor whose vapors were as noxious as the boiling contents of a witches brewing cauldron. For a long time, George stood at the mouth of the corridor and stared darkly into the poorly lit hallway infested with blind spots of seeping darkness and forests of shadows. His breath came short, his nerves were aflame. An anchor wrapped his ankles and did not let him move forward.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

_“Let her go, please … please, Mrs. Pelham, we won’t say anything to Aunt Edith or Daddy! PLEASE! George is just her friend, I swear! George is her friend, she doesn’t want to marry him! Please, don’t hurt Marigold! DON’T HUURRT HEEER!”_

_“PLEASE … I’M A GOOD GIRL! GRANNY M, PLEASE, DON’T, NO, NOOOHOHO, **PLEASE**!”_

A single droplet of sweat fell down his temple as the phantom screeching of little girls filled him. His hand trembled in old and crippling nightmares that were memories. But it went deeper than that, its dark seeds went much further, planting a black tree at the very heart of a boy’s doom. A flash of New York, of Halloween, rushed through his mind. A young boy watching a young mother sobbing that she wanted to go home, back to her husband, her children, her nephew … and an old woman spitting on her face to a chorus of laughter. They grabbed the young woman by the hair, led her to a bed of silk and tossed her back on top of it. And all the boy did was think back to this place, to little girls begging, screaming, and an old crone dragging the girl he loved toward the reeking bathroom, yanking her mercilessly from every obstruction the desperate golden-haired girl clung too. And It was in New York, in flashbacks of that night in Brancaster, that a boy of twelve, drew his father and aunt’s Webley from his coat to the illicit moans of a softly sobbing woman who begged the most powerful women in all of New York to stop.

It was every folly that followed from what an eight-year-old did here, to what a twelve-year-old did in New York, and everything that came afterward to this very night. It was for the love of a girl whom he shared the Evening Star, which helped him master his heart and every fell thing that held him to his mark at the ascent of the staircase. Small, tepid, came the first step forward into this garden of shadows which a glutenous black spider spun such evil snares in her isolation from society and reality itself. His steps came easier, descending into the opulent halls of a castle sponged by the venom and paranoia of madness that consumed a prideful and scornful old woman. His weapon clinked against his thigh in its Mexican holster with every step, his boots treading with soundless tuffs on the plush carpets of the long corridor.

For all the young man’s trepidation and fear of what he might find in this place, he also knew it like the back of his hand. Many times, in the old days, had he come here visiting his Aunt Edith, his Uncle Bertie, but mostly to stay with Marigold. Rarely, then, had he seen or known Mirada Pelham. But he knew of her, for long had she watched George and Marigold together from afar. Suspicion and doubt in her gaze of the two at play, yet, not saying why she misliked the two of them together. Her attempts to permanently separate Marigold from George was overbearing and laborious, always pressuring Edith to send George away, or to bring Marigold away from Downton more regularly. But Edith loved George too much, and great affection did Bertie grow to have for the boy as well. So, little heed was given to Mirada who only beheld the sound of children playing in the halls and secret pathways of the castle with disdain …

Especially the two children she stalked endlessly.

Ideally the youth would make a straight line to Marigold’s room, which he assumed was near his Aunt Edith’s. But as he turned the corner to the larger suites and apartments, he felt the need to make a detour. He knew the odds of the girl being where he opted to go was doubled after the firefight. Also, after what he saw at Downton this evening, a slow sickness in his gut formed of some secret fear of terrible possibility which he did not tell his Aunt Edith. His anger toward her might have been near rage after what her secret had stolen from him, but he would never be cruel enough to worry her further than she needed to be. While, in truth, with Marigold potentially in trouble, he couldn’t imagine driving a woman he loved insane with the prospect that the people she guarded in her heart were in trouble …

Or that there was a good possibility that the man she loved was murdered.

It was in the far end of the East Wing of Brancaster. The walls were lined with large portraits of past Marquesses. At the start they wore tweed suits and plain ties. Some were balding, some wore glasses, some young, many old. But the further down you got in the hall, the more their attire changed. From suits, to long collared white shirts with ribbon bowties, and Regency Jackets. By the time that those in the portraits were posing with flintlock rifles, tall and long powdered wigs, and wore antique armor, George knew he was in the right place. He saw his Aunt Edith’s room, the door open. Once more he drew his revolver and held it up by his ear as he slowly glanced inside the master’s chamber. All the lamps were on inside it, as his aunt left it. He did not go inside, sensing quickly that his adversary had hoped to take Lady Edith unaware as she was changing, but had just missed her when they sprang in.

But once more he felt a chill go up his spine. A rush of adrenaline ripping through his veins when he felt a presence looming right behind him. He whipped around quickly, drawing back the hammer of his sleek weapon in one smooth motion. He found himself holding a gun to the head of a stone angel. Her arms were held out to him in grace, the barrel of his gun aimed between her eyes. The blue glow of the night and mist swirled together outside the large and expansive window at the end of the corridor which cast its gloom behind the figure. The expression on the statue was unreadable in the odd shadows filling in the gaps of clashing artificial lamp and natural lights in the opulent residential wing of the master’s bedroom.

The youth saw that there were two statues, matching, both heads turned different directions. They were not here when George was last at Brancaster. These crumbling antiques, worn smooth after centuries, were taken from old medieval ruins of a burnt church in the nearby woods that he had discovered years ago. They were set sentry, but not for the woman who had stolen them from obscurity. The youth slowly lowered his weapon as he looked to the large floor-to-ceiling painting of a classical romantic depiction of Christ outside the tomb of Lazarus. The Jews of occupied Galilee gathered around the man in red shirt and blue cloaked sash. A veiled woman was on her knees in front of The Savior, whose head was wreathed in divine light.

But just as he stepped forward, he felt himself kick something. There was a sudden rattle of many items in a hollow container. The youth looked around wildly in readiness, hearing the noise carry down the corridor, giving away his position. He ducked low behind one of the statues, aiming his weapon down the hall, waiting for a figure to come slinking up to check on the noise. But after a long beat of held breath he saw and heard nothing. Though, he had a strange suspicion that he was being watched. Yet, he could not decipher the feeling of if someone really was watching him, or the peripheral instinct of half a dozen crafted and painted eyes of bust and portrait that seemed to follow him wherever he stepped. After a moment, he withdrew his aim, and crouched down to pick up what he had kicked. It was a carded box which slushed and rattled with items inside when George moved it. He saw that it was a box of pills, aspirins. It was labeled with the name of one of the most prestigious hospitals in London.

“Damn …” George swore under his breath in a shot of cold fear at what it meant.

The youth watched the corridor a moment longer, setting back down the pill box where it had lain, covering his tracks least someone doubled back and saw that he had been through already. He turned toward the painting of Christ and Lazarus he had his back against. He felt around the edges till he identified the old latch. Gently, quietly, George pressed it till something clicked. Slowly he swung the frame open on a hinge, revealing that the painting had been a secret door the entire time. The youth lifted his leg up to the vaulted stoop stepping inside the secret room of the castle, slowly closing it behind him. Meanwhile, as the moment’s past and the empty corridor of the castle remained quiet, a pair of dark human eyes gazing from the sight of the fifth Marquess’s face shifted one way and then the other, before the sound of something sliding closed echoed lightly.

Then, the painted eyes of the portrait returned.

George had already known that this room had existed. He had been told by Mr. Moseley that the seventh Marquess had it built so that he could keep his mistresses close while his wife slept. Other times it had been the Marchioness’s bedchamber, at least the ones which had ‘actually’ loved their husbands. When Marigold was little, it had been her bedroom. Though everyone told her that she could claim any wing of the whole castle for herself, the girl declined, wishing to be close to her Aunt Edith and Uncle Bertie. From the very beginning the little girl had little love for this place, holding her guardians ever close in the bad feelings she had of the too many dark halls. But it had been a long time since she had been here, and even longer since this had been her room. But George knew what would be here, only fearing of what fate had found its occupant.

In the large and spacious bedchamber there were gilded roses painted on the boarders. The room was a deep crimson that came off black in the gloom of the foggy night which waned through a small port window. Its dim light was like a beam that crossed the dark, spilling onto a king-sized bed with four tall posters, and a design of two lovers’ hand in hand on the headboard. It was clear that the room was built and decorated as a place, a sanctum, for secret lovers to meet and make love. But the romantic trappings and designs inherent in the décor of the secret room seemed marred by large and cluttering machines which whirred and hissed in the dark. Slowly, the alertness of George’s face fell away, and it was replaced by a sudden sorrow. He slid his revolver back into its holster as he walked forward to the side of the bed, reverence in every step.

It had been many long years since George Crawley had seen his Uncle Bertie Pelham, Marquess of Hexham. The last time he had spoken to him was on Thanksgiving of 1931, in New York. It was on the Thursday after the holiday. It had always hurt both to see the teary eyed and broken hearts of Edith and Marigold on the days when it was time to return home to England. Instead of following them in their grief, his uncle rather liked to end on something happy. Both had come up with a tradition of saving the best joke they had heard that year and telling it at the parting. So, it was, instead of saying goodbye, they each told a joke in the hopes of making the other laugh. It always worked, but no one ever won, because Bertie got so excited to tell his joke, that in the process he would make himself laugh. This, in turn, made George laugh at his uncle’s laugh. The boy would punch the man in the arm in chortling frustration, to which his uncle retaliated with a large hug. Even in the crowded taxi, with wife and stepdaughter, the man would still be laughing, pointing to George with a shake of his head.

_“The cheek of the Devil, the very – the very cheek! Ha!”_

It was a memory he wished to hold onto, especially, considering the last time that George had, actually, seen him.

It was weeks after what happened on Halloween. the Knickerbockers had placed a large price on his head. So big, in fact, that an entire city of starving people were now gunning for George. The boy had told Atticus to close San Sochi and take Rose and the babies to the consulate. Meanwhile, the boy had went underground, hiding in Chinatown with his local friends. He had told the Aldridge’s to get out, back for England, and that he’d wait for the heat to die down. He planned on getting out of town when the time was right, when every bounty hunter, Pinkerton loser, and desperate waif with a broken bottle wasn’t staking out every dock and train station within fifty miles of the five boroughs. And, for a time, it seemed to be the right plan.

George Crawley had just as many friends as he did enemies. The boy had lived his life with the same moto as his father. _“What man is a man who does not try to make the world a better place?”_ Thus, George Crawley had done as much as he could for those around him after three and a half years of living in a city which teetered on the abyss of oblivion. And much of his deeds in those hard days had more than warranted loyalty from many communities and neighborhoods. Even many beat police officers had a hand in helping misdirect the old families ‘private police’ and hired bounty hunters from finding the tween.

But it was by ill luck that George would always remain a small lad in the eyes of his Uncle Bertie. His perception of a young boy on the run was not taking into consideration the familiarity with the city and its people that George had. Bertie had come to New York as a deer who wandered thoughtlessly into the open glade where parties of hunters waited for him to give them their perfect shot. He searched for a week, going door to door, having many of them slammed in his face. They were flabbergasted by the sheer stupidity of the foreigner.

Even if George had been there, they’d not tell him, knowing he’d paint a target on their home or business. The boy had to stay a step ahead of the Pinkertons, and two ahead of Bertie so that he didn’t blow his cover. Finally, with no choice, George had sent a letter to the Consulate, telling his Uncles to take off, and that he’d be heading to New Orleans when the time was right. However, the boy hadn’t realized, or if he had, he felt he had no other choice, knowing the British Consulate was infested with spies for the enemy. Thus, his letter was intercepted, and redirected by Royal Decree to the Pinkerton offices.

Bertie had never gotten a bigger relief to be given a note from George. So happy had he been with the knowledge that George was alright, that he had called Edith from New York to report that he had found their nephew. He told her that _he wanted to meet at San Sochi_ , and after that they’d be on the first ship back with a worn-down Atticus, a traumatized Rose, and their two children. It would be the last time that Edith would ever hear her husband’s voice.

It had just so happened that George had been informed that the Pinkertons planned to demolish San Sochi in order to draw the boy out. And George had disguised himself as a city worker, one of the Irish child laborers from Hell’s Kitchen. The youth had secretly entered the Levinson family’s crumbling palatial mansion on Fifth Avenue. Quickly he was filling his sack with the things he wished to save, determining that he’d allow the Pinkerton’s to destroy the home which his Granny and Donk spent their first days as a married couple. No one had suspected that George was there, fooling them with his best Tom Branson impression. But as he was saving heirlooms of the great love which turned Downton Abbey from notorious to a shining Camelot, stuffing them into his messenger bag, he heard commotion. Racing to the window he saw that his uncle had shown up to the demolition, after George had sent a letter expressly telling him to stay away. The boy cursed, knowing, intuitively, that the Pinkertons had set a trap with a false letter and Bertie fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

The Marquess was throwing up quite the ruckus of resistance at what he saw. He had claimed to the foremen in charge that the property belonged to Martha and Harold Levinson, both whom had been missing for three years, thus it reverted to Lady Cora Levinson Crawley, a Countess of British Aristocracy. They couldn’t blow up the Gilded Age mansion, because, it belonged to a foreign dignitary. The disguised Pinkertons were supposed to have waited, allowed George time to arrive. Bertie was nothing but a bonus, a sweetening of the pot in order to draw the young outlaw out. But what they had hoped was that George would come to raise riot, was now Bertie Pelham, Marquess of Hexham. He was doing all their wolf’s head’s fighting, giving him no need to come out and show himself.

So, in a rash of anger and desperation, knowing their presence on the property was not remotely legal, the foreman struck Bertie. Soon five other thugs converged on the man and beat him into the slippery cobble till there was blood in the snow. Desperately, angerly, George drew his weapon and shot the lead Pinkerton off his horse from his Granny’s old bedroom window. It was enough to draw their ire and fire, all but forgetting a horrifically beaten Bertie. They had tried to burn the mansion down around George, but the tween had escaped through a servant’s entrance. Stealing a Pinkerton’s horse after shooting the man off his mount when he threw down with a shotgun, George saw Bertie only briefly as he galloped by.

His face was broken and smashed, his blood running down like rivers into the snow, turning it red, like cherry snow cones. The flames of the burning mansion reflected and glistened off the open wounds, illuminating his face a flickering orange. George had wanted to go back for him, but there was Tommy Gun fire everywhere. He had told himself that the only way to keep his uncle safe was to put as much distance from him as possible. So, he raced away being chased by dozens of toughs - machine gun fire trailing as he vaulted the horse over the truck hood that blocked the smashed open gates and rode into the snow crested night.

But years afterward, he was tormented whether there was just a chance to have saved Bertie.

It had been four years since then. And his uncle didn’t look too much different than he had in those happy holidays. The wounds, which had been terrible and horrifying when freshly given, had healed. Though the man had sported facial scars on his cheeks and nose. He saw that he had a beard now, a week old. They didn’t shave him but once a fortnight. George also noticed that his hair was allowed, by his caretakers, to grow out. So much so, in fact, that the youth might have even considered it long. He thought it strange that his uncle was so unkempt, considering his family’s standards. But then it dawned on George what conscious people did to keep their head and face warm in the cold, and how those poor souls in a coma could not, nor call to their discomfort. The central heating in Brancaster having always been spotty, and Autumn in full swing. A machine nearby hissed in and blew out, making a panting noise. The youth watched as contraptions under the covers inflated and then exhaled in rhythm with the machine. Wrapped snuggly around Bertie’s legs, the two air bladders massaged the Marquess’s arteries to keep away atrophy and blood clots as he slept.

Gently, the youth reached out, and for the first time in five years, he placed a hand on his uncle’s chest. He let out a sigh of relief when he felt his inhale and exhale as he continued to sleep. It was a fear that George couldn’t shake, the thought that his adversary would’ve gone out of her way to kill Bertie just to spite his Aunt Edith. It seemed out of the question that the woman he was hunting would do that to a defenseless man … but then nothing was out of the question after the terrible things he saw tonight. Things a mad woman had done with her own hands to the people she loved.

The young man took just a second, in relief, to look over his sleeping uncle. George’s hand reached up and gently swept back Bertie’s thin hair fondly. It seemed strange, it was an action that would’ve woken anyone up by now, and yet there was nothing he could do to trigger him. He guessed there was a part of himself which thought that he’d be the one to wake his uncle up, that somehow, he was the special touch. And even now he looked on the peaceful man’s face waiting for the moment soon when his eyes would snap open.

But it never happened.

Knowing that Marigold might be in danger, and that there was a mad woman on the loose, George could not linger. So, it was with a great pain and internalized guilt that he turned away. Though he looked once more back at the man, his eyes heavy with grief. His mind ever echoing with the things written and said about himself by Mirada Pelham, and even privately by his own family. How much blame George shouldered for the man being where and what he is was often debated. He was all too familiar with what his Aunt Edith and Marigold had been through, defending him, having his back when the world wanted to scorch the earth here at home, give him nowhere to return too. And no matter how much he sometimes hated his Aunt Edith, he would always Love her forever for believing in him, defending him when the world told her she was wrong. He only wished that he could’ve repaid her with something, to square them, and leave him in peace to loath the day she was wrought without guilt. In truth, he’d give her back his uncle if he could, it seemed the only price worth paying to satisfy the debt he had accumulated in the tattered hearts of Lady Edith and Marigold.

But just as he was leaving, he halted, sighing long in emotional pain, before returning to the bed.

“A woman gets married to a Newspaper man - sports reporter - gone every damn night, - working late shift to beat the presses. And when he’s there, everything is about the goddamn Brooklyn Dodgers, right? So, eventually, she gets pregnant. And like a typical asshole, he’s never there, but she ain’t complaining, right? That is till she hears about this new-fangled machine in the birthing room that transfers the pain from the woman to the man during childbirth. So now she wants him in the delivery room. So, she goes into labor and she asks the doctor to hook dear hubby to the machine … haha … huh? Doctor says sure, and the reporters not afraid, big tough Brooklyn kid, played football on the Hudson during blizzards, ‘he’ll be alright’ … ha! So, the doctor hooks him up and turns the dial to one, right? He doesn’t feel a thing. Doctor puts it up to three, four, six, right? Guy’s perfectly fine. Doctor jacks it up to the highest threshold, past the most dangerous settings … ha … still nothing, right? But the wife is having the easiest childbirth since Eden, baby slips out like a water slide. The doctor is puzzled about why the machine didn’t work, all the other fathers had felt something in the past. So, a few days later, couple comes home with the baby … and they find the Milkman dead from a heart attack at the doorstep!”

George let out a scoffed laugh when he was done, his shoulders shaking as he watched Bertie. He chuckled for a long time, imagining, picturing his uncle’s laugh. After a beat the humor grew heavy and lost its punch. And somewhere a chortle turned to a sniffle as cerulean eyes watered. “Yeah …” He cleared his throat after a long pause. His fore finger and thumb wiped the moisture away before it turned into tears. He bit the center of his lip and nodded with another sniff as he patted the unconscious man’s shoulder affectionately. The boy had been saving the joke that old Joe Goldberg, the owner of the deli on Fourteenth Street, told him over a toasted turkey, Salami, and mozzarella sub four years ago. It brought little comfort now that he had told it to his uncle, but he had lived up to his promise, and he had others to tell since their last parting. 

With one last shake of his head of the impossibility of opening eyes, the youth exited his uncle’s sick room.

When George closed the painting frame door with a silent click, he looked back and forth in the corridor. His skin prickled, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and his breath was trapped in his throat. His Aunt Edith’s door was shut, and the box of pills that he placed back down on the floor before stepping into Bertie’s room was missing. With a flick of leather, George smoothly drew his weapon again. Someone had been through here while he was inside the secret bedchamber. He immediately slipped soundlessly across the corridor, using the corner for cover as he peered out toward the path to the conservatory in the North Wing of the castle. It was the only path that made any sense to go. After the firefight, the madwoman wouldn’t risk being seen by going right back to the main staircase where he was sure his orders were ignored, and the great hall was filled with his aunt’s guests. Though, it would help to know what this crazed fiend really wanted and how far to the extreme she would go to get whatever it was.

But just as he was readjusting his feet, he felt something pop and crunch underneath the tread of his worn boot heel. The youth frowned and lifted his foot to see that it had been an aspirin from the box of pills. Then, just before taking a step away from cover, he noticed that there was another one. He knelt and took it in hand. He observed it through his fingers, crouching ponderously. After a suspicious pause, he looked down and saw that there was one more, followed by another a few paces later. What he had initially, almost, dismissed as spilt pills, he now recognized as someone leaving a trail to follow.

There was a part of himself that felt defensive at the cliché. He almost shouted for his adversary to ‘go screw’ for insulting his intelligence by thinking him that stupid. But quickly running contrary to his instinct was the thought of something else. A feeling that came straight from the heart that whoever left the trail of pills wasn’t the madwoman running around a haunted castle with her husband’s pistol. But someone who was desperate to be found, who was already caught, and leaving a bread trail for a young man she knew was inside her daddy’s sick room as they passed it.

“Marigold …” George’s breath was caught, a shooting pain ran through his soul, his fist crushing the capsule to powder. 

He didn’t waste any time getting to his feet. For anyone else they might have taken to a sprint, their emotions ruled by their heart. But George Crawley had been here before, in these situations. With every fiber of his being he wanted to rush out like any man might at the thought of the girl he loved being held captive. But he had lost too many friends, seen too many good men die that way. He had dealt with wicked figures in his past who, well-nigh, understood normal people’s basic instincts and had used it against them. And George was sure that if he had rushed in with guns blazing, he’d turn a corner to find a bullet in the head by some crazed woman lying in wait, Marigold choking in thrall to her grasp. So, the youth set a pace which was quickened, but every step controlled, every angle covered and observed as he crossed the upper balcony bridge to the other side of the castle toward the citadel.

But even when he was aware not to rush into anything, his pace, his mind on the possibility of Marigold captured blinded him from other emotional hurdles that should’ve been forgotten. And it was by that same panic within those old memories that familiar sights and smells only enhanced his aggression and fear. He knew where he was as he came up to it. He paused, skipped a step, when he saw the staircase that once, long ago, a boy had shed his pack to free himself of the weight, charging up the steps to the sound of screams. He passed the open bridged gallery from the East Wing and into the darkness of the North Wing. He knew the path that a small boy once sprinted through, stopping to hide behind the very statue of an armored Athena with her owl perched on her shoulder. George saw nothing down the hallway, just an immensely black obscurity. There were no windows, no light fixtures to the walls, but one single candelabra that flickered with three wax sticks afire in an alcove of the oldest part of the castle. Here, the walls were made of stone, there was no insulation, barely any light to be found. In the past this had been where George, Lady Mary, and Tom had been relegated when they stayed here under a united House of Hexham in the early days of Edith and Bertie’s marriage.

For a drawn-out moment, George listened very hard, hoping he might hear any sort of activity echoing down the hall. But he found nothing of the sort, for all his knowledge of Brancaster, his mark was being very clever about these things. It only spoke truth to his heart that this attention to detail came from a creature of sheer desperation. Sidling to the wall, keeping an eagle’s eye toward the end of the corridor, George continued his pursuit, following the aspirin trail left behind. But he paused when he saw a doorknob. It was made of shined copper but dented and twisted out of place at an off angle.

_“NOOO, NOOHOHOHO! PLEASE, I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG!”_

George’s breath came shorter at the visible scar left behind by a terrified little girl, screaming and sobbing, holding onto a cleaning closet’s doorknob for dear life, as an old woman yanked and ripped a girl from her feet, tugging her violently by her waist. Once her grip was broken, the woman, madness in her eyes, roared that the girl was an ‘unclean harlot’ in her face. Then she began carrying her like a toddler down the hall, while the girl only cried hoarsely, mewingly contradicting the hurtful accusation in sobs. Much like the boy within the memory, it led him quicker down the path. But, eventually, all roads led to the place where it all came to ahead many years ago. It was the guest bathroom at the center of the North Wing, across from the flickering candelabra who cast a bubble of light from its invisible cove in the wall.

Even now, years later, there was the faintest smell of bleach whiffing from the old tub.

It began on the back of celebration, fore, it was the third time that Lady Edith was pregnant. It had been a year since her first child with Bertie Pelham, a little boy, had come into the world, bloody, not breathing, and only after seven months. Great was Edith and Bertie’s grief. In that time the two had taken joyous comfort in the children, Sybbie, George, and especially Marigold. Just being around them healed such turmoil of their very existence in their loss. The three stayed the summer with their Aunt Edith and Uncle Bertie in London. Their laughter, candor, and deeply endearing comradery together had healed their favorite aunt’s woes, intensifying her love. And it was not long after that sad, but glorious, summer that Edith was with child again. The family was trepidatious but elated none-the-less.

But as the months went on, Lady Edith grew bigger and bigger, much larger than she had previously. And it was that they celebrated the passing of the seven-month mark with relief. There was no doubting that Lady Edith was carrying twins, which she found odd, because, she couldn’t think of neither Bertie nor her family having twins. Lady Grantham found it odd as well, but privately she found refuge in her husband’s arms suffering in the silence of a painful secret of a still born son who had come into the world with his twin sister Mary clutching his hand. Only Carson had known, and the man would go to his grave cherishing the first baby he ever held and grieving ever in promised silence for the missing part of a whole. His heart, along with his lord and ladyship were often broken while they quietly watched Mary’s cold and unfeeling demeanor, knowing that it was a symptom of a piece of herself robbed at birth. And it was that often they watched George and Sybbie over the years and pondered what might have been for their poor Mary who had always felt that something, a great anchoring love, was missing in her life.

But in the final months of Edith’s pregnancy, and the doubled swelling of her belly, her weariness had become near deathly. She soon found many things hard to manage and conceived that the situation was delicate. Lady Grantham had come to London to stay with Edith, to help her navigate the difficult pregnancy. In that time, they had resolved to send Marigold to Downton to stay with Robert, Mary, Tom, and Sybbie. She would also spend the weekends with George at Crawley House, watched over by Isobel and Dickie. But, seemingly out of nowhere, it was Mirada Pelham who volunteered to look after the girl. Fore, it was, though Marigold was Edith’s shameful secret, hidden from society. The woman cherished the girl greatly and it was that - despite her strict demeanor - they both had always been relatively fond of one another.

Edith found it very hospitable and agreed to it, with support of Robert who had always loved Marigold but was unsure how close he should be to her. But it was Cora who noticed that, out of all people, it was Bertie who seemed very hesitant about it. Though he would not say, Lady Grantham perceived long ago, that her son-in-law was haunted by his rearing, and had never fully trusted his mother. She did not pry, but even Robert’s dismissals in bed could not dissuade her worry of the opaqueness that surrounded the fierce mother of the Marquess of Hexham. So, it was, quite clumsily, that when Marigold asked if Sybbie could come with her, that Cora agreed.

She had come to know from George that Marigold didn’t like going to Brancaster alone, that she was scared. The boy spoke in confidence, over he and Cora’s regular Friday lunches, that Marigold wouldn’t say exactly what she didn’t like about it, just that she didn’t want to be alone in the place. But when Cora asked Edith, her daughter only claimed that the statues and paintings unnerved the little girl, that she was uncomfortable with the staff who never spoke out of the servant’s hall and lingered a bit too long in the shadows of the corridors.

Mary was disagreeable of letting her daughter stay in such a place with a woman she didn’t know or like very much. And neither was Tom, as both Mary and he, at the time, were having massive behavioral issues with Sybbie. Tom, who had ever cherished and loved his daughter above all else, woke up one morning to find that, somewhere down the line, Sybbie had become horribly spoiled by everyone around her.

It came from a confrontation with George.

At the time the two were coming from different styles of parenting. Sybbie regularly got whatever she asked for from either Mary or Robert, who she always had wrapped around her finger. Meanwhile, George rarely asked anything of Isobel and Dickie. Instead, he found contentment in the simpler things he discovered on his walkabouts around the Estate and village. Isobel had been parenting her grandson with imposing limited means, the same budget, the same rules, in which Matthew had grown up at Nampara House. George had taken great pride in the things he did have, and even greater pride in the ingenuity of not needing other things that most wanted. 

Both children were but a reflection of their fathers in these matters.

Tom had long saw, not Sybil, but himself in his daughters delights for the finer things in life. Ever as a small boy was Tom Branson accused by brothers, cousins, and father of having a liking of the finer things and pursuing their ownership. And the man conceded long ago that much of his politics and convictions of his youth had been envy of the exquisite and beautiful denied to people of his class and upbringing. When he thought of Sybil, and his enamoring with the crown jewel of the County of Grantham, he did so with shame. For there was no purity for his initial infatuation with the lovely teenage princess. And it was only in the kindness and friendship of the girl and young woman that he saw the truth, and ever the enrichment of his love that went beyond her finery and beauty. Even now he understood that these failings were part of the equation of his relationship with Mary. Though their love wasn’t romantic in the slightest, still Tom was drawn to Lady Mary’s beauty and finery, however sore it made him at times in her flaunting of knowing it and cherishing it. Thus, he felt a deep doubt in his heart when he saw that his daughter was more like him than she was her real mother. Fore Sybbie was ever enamored with many fine and extravagant things that shined and glimmered in the light. She was effete, high maintenance, with a beguiling charm which disarmed even Lady Violet.

But for George, though he seldom took after Matthew on the surface, of the things he did gain from his father it was his propensity for quiet contentment. Fore Matthew Crawley saw no bad thing in the celebration of a simple life. And it was that he had cherished his uneventful and normal middle-class existence in Manchester before destiny and doom called him hence. And great then was his stubbornness and pride against the greater calling to adventure in the County of Grantham, determined to hold onto the quiet study and little gardens of his childhood and young life at Nampara House in Cornwall. But it was only love which dislodged him from his determination, and in the imaginings of the fine Lady Mary in his arms that he strove, ever quietly, to win her heart. And it was that, though love was born between the two at very first glance, it was his dedication to the ennoblement of his destiny in the values of the simple and quiet life of his upbringing that Mary saw her future. Her love given forever to his sweated brow to better all things in his charge.

Thus, for all the boy’s bold dashing and steadfast valiance in many adventure, George Crawley admired self-reliance and cherished the quiet of a countryside life. His rejection of the Lordships of the House of Grantham was born in his blood which carried a fond remembrance of a father’s prayer that his children would know someday the contentment of the quiet simplicities of everyday life. In the boy’s heart he saw the power, not in the heraldry of a Noble House, nor the Lordship of a County, but in the quiet decency of everyday people in the small acts of kindness and love in the land which he lived side by side.

It was everything that Matthew Crawley held dearly and believed with all his heart. 

In that contrast of best friends and adopted siblings, Sybbie began to resent George for his simple contentment, taking it as an insult that he was happier with some homemade figurine he made himself, rather than the newest thing that Robert had bought for her. And one day, in a terrible fit, Sybbie had taken George’s favorite stick, which was his sword, rifle, and magic wand in play and broke it. In a fury she had cast it into the creek. When Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes found them - during their leisurely walk - the two children were rolling in the dirt, throwing punches and smacking one another. But when they were brought before Tom and Cora, Mary had mocked George for starting a fight over a stick. But the boy was dismissed back to Crawley House by his grandfather after George had rancorously made a deeply wounding joke about Mary’s hair - knowing it would ruin her day.

But Tom was shocked and angered by what he heard from Sybbie’s mouth in his departure. She went on a tirade about how George thought he was better than her. That he was happier with his sticks and his stupid old books than she was with her pony. But she informed them that George wasn’t better than her, that he was living in a drafty old house, wearing dumb ‘poor people’ clothes, and that he doesn’t even cut his hair regularly anymore. She was the one who was better than George, they all were better than George and Isobel!

Tom was incensed, grabbing a hold of her shoulders and angrily rebuking the prideful and disgusting things that she said. He harkened to her scornfully by her full name and informed the little girl that she wasn’t better than anybody, that none of them were. That living in Downton Abbey, wearing these clothes, and having people who love her so much that she wanted for nothing was a privilege, that she was lucky. And he’d better never hear her say the things she had about anyone, much less George, and especially Isobel. But the girl, having been scorned and humiliated more than once today, ran away in tears.

But when Robert tried to rebuke Tom for his temper, he was met with a fiercely angry son-in-law. He tore into all of them, Robert, Mary, and Cora, accusing them of turning his little girl into a brat. But when rhetorically asked if they heard what Sybbie had just said, Mary didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it - only that their little girl said it out loud. Tom was not amused by Mary’s tone, and threw in her face that she might be able to abandon her child and sleep at night, but he would not let others dictate his little girl’s values, nor how she valued others. With that he stormed out, while Mary was once more wounded by harsh words. Weeks later they were still not on good terms - no one was. Sybbie didn’t want to talk to her daddy, didn’t want to talk to George, and was bitterly incredulous that the word ‘no’ was being reintroduced into her life, even if it was killing Robert.

George had told Isobel, Dickie, and an unwelcome Violet that he blamed it on Sybbie’s new look.

It had been, for most of their life, that their mamma had looked to their appearance. Whatever day clothing that Mary had bought, she also had matching masculine clothes made for George so that they could dress to match every day. Meanwhile whatever hairstyle Mary was sporting, she had Sybbie’s hair styled to match her. That way whenever they were out and about together, people always knew, whether by George’s matching clothes, or Sybbie’s matching hair, that they were Lady Mary Talbot’s children. For years their mamma had sported the ‘Bob’, and in turn, for years, Sybbie also sported the ‘Bob’. But recently Lady Mary had decided to let her hair grow long again, and as such, Anna was instructed to allow Sybbie’s hair to grow as well. In the meantime, after years of their Granny and his Uncle Tom picking out Sybbie’s clothes, Lady Mary had decided to make over Sybbie in coordination with herself. The bereft woman deciding to reinvent herself after Baby Caroline’s death. In doing so, Lady Mary had spent a fortune on herself and Sybbie, creating a stylish and attractive pair in mamma and daughter.

But, also, in doing so, some of the clothing that Sybbie now wore, the light makeup that Mary allowed Anna to put on her, and the long glossy curls in perfect ringlets tied in satin bow had consequences. In the time just before Sybbie was made over, her hair growing out, the girl went through her first change. And over a summer, the cute, freckled, and chubby cheeked little girl had melted away. And in her budding came the first signs of a true beauty of the future beginning to take shape. George said that it made people, especially certain men, look at Sybbie differently. He couldn’t describe it, but the new way she was dressing, the new way she looked with make-up and the more maturing of her face, caused people to treat her differently, cherish her more.

Isobel and Violet both thought it obscene for Mary to dress Sybbie in such a way as she had been. But the boy only shrugged and said that all he knew was that Sybbie was trying to pretend she was older due to the attention. And that some people treat her differently and would give her whatever she wants, because, of the way she looks now. It was Violet who caught that George had something to get off his chest, but instead didn’t speak of it. Only leaning back in his cushioned chair, glaring at the old woman when she stared at him.

When Cora told George that Sybbie and Marigold were going to Brancaster till his Aunt Edith’s babies were born, the boy didn’t like it. But he was unspeaking of why it was, only that he didn’t think it was a good idea. George had no love for Mirada Pelham, and in turn, Mirada had a dark prejudice against the boy. No one knew exactly why that was, beyond the fact that George Crawley didn’t get along with any woman of the gentry over the age of fifty that wasn’t named Isobel Merton and Cora Crawley. But the boy doubled down on his silence when Cora brought up the conversation that he had with his elder grandparents about Sybbie. His granny sensing the connection. But instead he relayed that if she sees his Granny Violet, she could tell ‘The Old Crow’ to keep her ‘chicken beak’ out of other people’s business. Cora, once more, admonished her boy’s popular comparison of Lady Violet to a chicken. But then Lady Grantham leveled with George that she been trying for forty years to tell Violet Crawley to mind her own business …

No progress had been made.

But the news seemed to stay with George for a long time. Darkly had he pondered on the new developments. The boy was gun shy about stirring anything up, especially when babies were again at stake. But he knew that things were getting worse, and that waiting till his new cousins were born might be too late to speak up. But his half-understanding of suspicions seemingly rang true in his musings of a greater code that no child of eight had a key to unlock. So, he sought counsel in the detachment of a friend and mentor which had no care for an Aristocratic family’s troubles.

For a week every month, and a month for every season, George attended intense studies, tutoring, and combat training by a mysterious captain of the ocean depths. It was a deal, a bargain that Lady Merton agreed to two years past with the Science Pirate. In those sessions George Crawley learned much of the world as it is, was, and even of what it might be. He learned the sword, ancient languages and text, advanced arithmetic, and navigation. His lessons were hard, but fair, and he was taught self-reliance in teaching one’s self.

The Captain liked to put a task before George, and yet, give him no aid, only the free roaming of his clockwork vessel and full access to his extensive library to unravel this Gordian puzzle. It soon became up to the boy as to how he would achieve such a task with no help or rules. And it was there that George Crawley found the value of books, fore he had to teach himself many things, before getting to the achievement of the task. Thus, by the time that George had accomplished the thing set before him, he had learned more than one lesson on his journey to completion. And it gave the Captain no better Joy than to be debated in different point of view in their discussion of the work and subject, fore he knew then, that not only had his apprentice learned the lesson …

But became much his own man in the learning of it.

And it was during such a quiet moment, the boy sitting in the Captain’s office as the Sikh Prince smoked a pipe, lost in thought. His dark and crazed eyes looking up from the ember glow of his seaweed tobacco to see George halt his translation of a scroll of Adûnaic which had faded borders of a sunken island kingdom that had once been known by the Greek Scholars of the Library of Alexandra. Now it only exists in the remaining and conserved dialogues of Plato. But to this uncovering of a lost empire which fell before the changing of the shape of the world, the boy had other things on his mind. And it was seen by the Captain who watched the youth lean back from five open volumes of the prince’s studying of the matter in his earliest days of exploring the great fathoms below.

When he was asked what troubled him, the boy explained the situation at home. He started with his fight with Sybbie. But told more of it than his family knew existed. They had been playing around, making up stories about some far-off adventure they wanted to go on. Much like everyone knew, Sybbie had grown jealous of the boy’s contentment with his stick. But at first, she hadn’t lashed out and broken it. Instead, she wanted it, to just hold it. The girl wasn’t cruel, she wouldn’t do anything to it, but she had wanted, for just a moment, to take it away from him. George told her no, that if she wanted a stick that she could go find one of her own. It was an argument that lasted only a minute, before Sybbie chased him around, till he climbed a tree, something she couldn’t do in her new fancy dresses.

Then, something weird happened.

Sybbie offered him a trade. If George gave her his stick, she’d let him kiss her. To that the boy only scoffed. Leaping down, he quickly pecked her cheek, and spinning away from her grasp. He had arrogantly said that he didn’t need to give her anything for a kiss. But then, the girl told him, ‘not that kind of kiss.’ That had made George stop in his tracks and wondered what she meant.

She then revealed that she had found a new way to get things. That all she had to do was let someone kiss her on the lips, and they’d give her whatever she wanted. George asked if it was one of those weird Gentry kids that their mamma made her have tea with. But she shook her head and said that it was an adult, and that the other day, while she was with their granny - checking on their Aunt Edith - someone there had asked her if there was anything that she desired. The girl relayed that she really wanted some emerald earrings, but that her daddy wouldn’t buy them for her, because, he wouldn’t allow her to pierce her ears. The person at their Aunt Edith’s said that they would buy them for her, if she’d let them kiss her. Sybbie had gotten kisses before, every day, and the person was liked by Marigold. So Sybbie didn’t mind. But instead she was led to a private bedroom, sat on the person’s lap, and they kissed her, not on the cheek or forehead, but right on the lips.

For a long time, they had kissed Sybbie, the person’s hands running over the fabric of the girl’s dress, and underneath it. But then when their Uncle Bertie came looking for them, Sybbie was quickly thrown back on the bed, as far from the person as possible as he entered the room. And for a long and stunned moment, their uncle stood in silence looking at the merciless glare of the person and the feverish little girl with glazed over eyes on the bed. But when he left, with an old childhood scar renewed inside him, Sybbie was told that it was their secret, and that she wouldn’t get her earrings if she told anyone about their kiss … nor the other things.

Then, Sybbie reached into her coat pocket and showed George the adult women’s earrings that were more expensive than anything at “Tiffany’s” in New York. The girl said that it was scary and uncomfortable at first, and she didn’t like the touching under her skirt, but then … she admitted that, after the initial fear, what they were doing felt very good. But George looked mortified by what he heard, and it only made Sybbie angry. She quickly said that the person liked – no - _loved_ kissing her. She swore that George would like it too, and that if he gave her his stick, that he could kiss her whenever he wanted and for however long he wanted, even pet her knickers like the person did.

But the boy backed away from her in horror.

Feeling a rush of fear, shame, and sudden realization that it was a bad thing that happened to her, the girl lashed out in defensive emotions of sheer devastation. She then ragefully chased George down, tackled him to the leaves, and tried to kiss him, to show him that he was the one who was wrong. After two struggling lip locks, George slugged Sybbie in the face, sending her rolling. She had tears in her eyes and cried at the rejection and the realization of her molestation, more than the punch. Then, in that horrible confusion and fear she let out a shill screech of primal despair. The teary-eyed girl, scared of things she didn’t understand, broke George’s stick over her knee and threw it into the creek. With that, the boy went full on in attack for revenge.

For a long time, the captain had sat in a smoke plume silence weighing what his apprentice had told him.

He seemed unreadable in the dark as he pushed further of why this story mattered now. But George spoke of that summer, after his return from his month-long expedition with the Captain and his crew. It had been at his Aunt Edith’s flat in London. He had been let in by his aunt’s friendly housekeeper who was cleaning the toilets. He had wanted to sneak up on Sybbie and Marigold, to surprise them on his return from the voyage at sea. But as he slowly stalked into the sitting room, completely unseen, he saw that Sybbie and Marigold were sitting on the sofa, being instructed in needle point by Mirada Pelham, his Uncle Bertie’s mother. She was looming over Sybbie, having seen the girl for the first time in her new wardrobe and hairstyle, dolled up by Anna and Lady Mary. Marigold was watching from the corner of her eye with discomfort as her “Granny M” petted and touched Sybbie, her shoulders, her perfect curls, feeling the material of her smooth dress with shivered breath. If anything, Sybbie seemed to be arrogant about the affection, thinking that it meant that she was doing better than Marigold at their lesson.

Yet, the older woman’s attentions had become so physically intrusive to the smug girl’s work that she had accidently caused Sybbie to prick herself with the needle. The girl wanted to cry, Marigold immediately embracing her best friend. But Mirada Pelham had taken the right course of action - sternly telling the young girls to master their emotions, that it was just a prick, and that it wouldn’t kill her.

It started first in something that most would not see as odd. Mirada had taken Sybbie’s bloody forefinger and stuck it in her mouth and sucked on it. George knew that there was uses for saliva in minor cuts. But this was strangely different, and he saw it in the woman’s eyes. At the time, George couldn’t describe it, only that it made him uncomfortable. It went on too long, the woman’s eyes staring intently at the first budding signs of a great beauty in a young girl’s face. Marigold made a disturbed wince on the couch as Sybbie whimpered and shifted, lost in the dominate older woman’s eyes at the suckling of her finger, feeling a tongue swirling over her digit.

Suddenly, the hand of George Crawley had interceded into that strange incident. The boy, coming completely unseen, ripped Sybbie’s finger out of Mirada’s mouth. The woman was startled, then fearful, to see the cold glare of George Crawley standing eye level with the kneeling woman in front of the young girl. Everyone in the room was shocked to see George, but there was no fanfare when the boy roughly grasped Sybbie’s hand and yanked her to her feet. Without another word, George led his sister away from the crouching woman and out the door, Marigold quickly following behind, reaching for Sybbie’s other hand. As the girl left, she was the only one who saw fear turn to the deepest of black hatred for a young boy.

Fore a Hypocrite hates the one who exposes them only less than the sin they condemn in public and commit themselves in private.

When George was done telling the story, he presented the theory that both incidents were connected somehow. That the incident with the finger, the look in Mrs. Pelham’s eyes, she had to be the same person who feverishly kissed and groped Sybbie on their Aunt Edith’s bed, and gave her the emerald earrings for her silence. He was sure of it, as he was sure that he had in his possession a map of the _Atalantë_. At any other point, that might have made the Captain smile at the right answer to the task he assigned.

But not then.

In this, the Sikh Science Pirate, not since the death of his wife and children, had anything of human affairs so grievously troubled him. And though his eyes were wild, his heart cold, he saw great peril in the situation that his apprentice had fallen in. Had he not sworn an oath to never mettle in the affairs of the land, more might had been done on behalf of George. Yet, he hardened to his dark heart, and held to his oath. But, nevertheless, he gave willingly more counsel on the matter than he’d spare any other human. And thus, he warned his apprentice to be very cautious about what to do. There were many factors at play here.

Though he was old - ancient to one as young as George - the world changed since he last made it his home, long before Robert and Cora Crawley were born. He knew that the violation of one so young and lovely had never ended in peace when the devil was exposed in all his evils. He told George to confide in someone trustworthy, which could articulate the incidents and suspicions effectively to those of authority which, then, could take mindful steps in protecting one of whom George loved most in the universe. When the boy left the Nautilus on Nampara Cove, the Captain stopped George disembarking, and warned him to master his heart and emotions. He perceived much darkness that lay ahead on his road home, and that when they meet again, it will not be a happy tide that bears him in return.

But his advice was not heeded.

Though it was not out of pride, but of ignorance. Fore a child, so young, knew nothing of what he had seen nor, could he comprehend the evils that lay ahead. George returned home to Crawley House to find that it had been two weeks since his Step-Grandfather Dickie Merton had died, and a week since his funeral. The boy was dreadfully hurt by the news. He had liked Dickie quite a bit. The man had always felt inadequate as a Grandfather, but the boy told him that he was more than fine as a friend. He never knew that the magic the old peer bore was not in love, but the simple interest in George’s life, the engagement of conversation with the boy of all he had learned from the Science Pirate’s Library and vessel. He did not ignore him like his Donk and mamma, nor did he coddle him to make up for all that was missing like his granny and Aunt Edith. Dickie had simply been there, been interested, and listened when George talked. And it was a blow to the boy to come home, especially then, to find the one person he knew he could always rely upon to confide in was gone forever. 

It was a long day of sitting and waiting, his grams in the hospital again, his granny with his Aunt Edith in London, and the girls at Brancaster. For the first time, the young boy found himself completely alone in his father’s house. He was unsure what to do, pacing the floor, pondering if he could trust Anna, Mr. Bates, Mrs. Baxter, the way he knew he could’ve trusted Dickie with the things he knew of Sybbie and her kisses. The boy did not even consider Thomas, knowing by intuition that the butler’s hot heart for those he loved could only make things worse in his coldly cruel scheming vengeance. But just then the phone rang … and in some ways it hadn’t stopped, even now. George, thinking it the hospital with news of his Grams, answered it quickly. But he found that it was Marigold. The girl was crying, sobbing frightenedly. She said nothing, not when George pressed her for what was going on. The girl, instead, only tapped on the talk piece before she suddenly hung up. The boy’s blood went cold, and his hair stood on end.

It was the children’s private emergency signal.

Denker, Lady Violet’s maid, would forever grudge her future employer for the ‘dastardly’ blackmail that he presented when he came to the backdoor of the Dower House’s kitchen. He required a ticket for the last train to Brancaster for the evening. The drunken woman was loathsome to pay it but did so in protection of her place. Thus, George, pack on his back, geared for war, stowed away into the evening, bound for Brancaster Castle. What came next was blurs with sudden technicolor clarity in moments which haunt him even now.

But what he did remember most vividly about this old castle was the nauseating smell, the commotion, and most of all the squealing cries of Marigold. A terrified little girl who grabbed ahold of railings and door frames, begging in horrified sobs for the Butler dragging her down the corridor to stop. He remembered Sybbie in a loose silky ‘Wood Nymph’ costume with a crown of roses on her head. She was holding onto a crazed Mirada Pelham’s robe, pulling hard, crying for her to stop, saying that she’d let her do anything she wanted to her if she didn’t hurt Marigold. It was only a flickered second that the Science Pirate’s words rang in George’s ears, before he leapt into action.

By the time George arrived - fire poker in hand - the butler of Brancaster was restraining Sybbie, who was wearing more makeup than even their mamma would’ve allowed. They were standing outside a bathroom where a crazed Mirada Pelham - with eyes made of pure venom and delusion - was tearing Marigold’s nightgown off. Sybbie was screeching for Mirada to let the girl go, meanwhile, Marigold was desperately clinging to the doorway. The girl was squealing in linin shorts and naked upper body as the old woman tried to pry Marigold free, lifting her completely off the ground. George could smell it before he ever saw it. The rank odor of boiled bleach was suffocating as it whiffed from the bathroom. Mirada was completely lost in some fierce and cruel bout of madness, growling of the filth and degeneracy which clung to Marigold like a diseased flesh that had to be purified.

She claimed that the golden-haired little angel had a sickness in her, filled with unnatural thoughts and feelings for those she shouldn’t. Beyond the doorway, in the green, gold, and white tiled bathroom, was a bathtub filled to the brim with scolding hot bleach which Mirada Pelham was attempting to wash Marigold’s exposed supple flesh with – unknowing and uncaring that it would melt it right off a girl so young and delicate.

Till this day it was never truly known what had made Mirada Pelham react the way she did. Long had she watched George and Marigold, since the day that Edith and Bertie had married. In that time, she alone - by some foresight of providence - saw the bond between young children which was more than a simple friendship or kinship. And as they got older, it came clearer to the woman’s watchful eye how much George cherished Marigold, and how the girl, in return, ever strayed by his side, her hand in his. The woman had been the first and only, till many years later, to come to know the truth of George and Marigold’s great and secret love. But what had prompted her reaction to ‘wash clean’ Marigold was only known by two people, and both girls only spoke of it once, to George and Thomas in the aftermath. 

What was known, was a frighten Marigold was driven from her room by a terrible and violent thunderstorm. She had gone to seek out Sybbie so they could sleep in comfort together. But when she entered the room, she saw something that shouldn’t have been happening between a grown woman and a sweaty and mewling young girl, crowned by roses, eyes glossy, and the hem of a silky costume dress pushed up to her chest. Marigold had fled in fear of what she saw the woman doing to Sybbie. Darting downstairs, she quickly phoned Crawley House, phoned George out of a subconscious reaction, fearing to bother her Aunt Edith in such a delicate condition with such horrifying things. But she was quickly captured by the servants and taken back up to Mirada’s bedroom.

For most of the night the woman tried to explain to Marigold of what she saw, what had been going on between her and Sybbie since they had gotten there. But she couldn’t get Marigold to stop crying. Even when she told her that it was something that all women – grown up women – do, she could not stop the girl from telling her that it was wrong, that she was hurting Sybbie, that it was wicked what she was doing to her. The girl’s accusatory words fueled a desperate madness, seeing only ruin and ridicule for the last of the failing House of Hexham. But the bending frame of her unhinging came when Marigold revealed, in a child’s longing, that she had called George and that he would come and get them. To that, Mirada gave over to a rage of self-righteous defense of her terrible urges born from the curiosity and coveting of the secret Journals her husband and son’s cousin had kept hidden of his exploits with his own young male victims. Thus, she ordered that Marigold be cleansed, and that Sybbie be set free from her room to witness it, just in case she thought of telling anyone what had been happening between them.

But George sprang out of the darkness in that eleventh hour - like an avenger - just as blood was being torn out of Marigold’s now missing fingernails. He took a fire poker like it was the rapier he had been trained to use. With an expert swing, the boy freed Sybbie with a sickening thud that knocked the butler’s knee out of joint. The eight-year-old didn’t have the arm strength to shatter it, but the iron and momentum was enough to do permanent damage. The man roared in pain as George felled upon him, beating the blunted end of the poker in his laborious gut for laying hands on the girls he loved.

But he halted when Marigold screamed for him as her fingers finally gave way. When George and Sybbie rushed into the bathroom, the blonde-haired little girl was squirming violently as Mirada paced toward the bubbling and reeking tub. The boy sprang in pursuit, leaping up and wrapping his arms around the woman’s neck, bending her backwards. Marigold hit the tiled floor with a thump. She cried, holding her elbow, cradled by a sweat glistened Sybbie. Both girls were overshadowed by the struggling silhouettes of woman and child. They watched in fear as an eight-year-old boy and a woman in her late fifties fought like feral dogs. Snarling and growling, they crashed into counter, wall, towel rack, and cracked a mirror when the boy was thrown against it headfirst. But George - blood running gruesomely down his forehead - mounted the counter as the woman made for the girls again, and leapt onto her as she passed, renewing their clawing and flailing. Finally, the boy got enough of an upper hand, using his lower center of gravity to smash his shoulder into the older woman’s thighs. All it took was a misstep, the coagulation of bubble burst puddles on the tile floor, to make the woman slip.

No one there that night would forget the terrible scream Mirada Pelham made when she fell back first into the boiling bleach filled tub.

**CRACK!**

Suddenly, the youth was startlingly ripped away from his dark memories in front of a bathroom. A room, in which the children of the House of Grantham had lost their innocence in many ways. He turned quickly when he heard the gun shot. As if it was yesterday, once more, George heard the screaming cry of anguish from Marigold. Forgotten was his dark ponderings, his terrible memories of the sickening smell of boiling bleach. He charged forth unabated, unworried for his safety. His entire mind shifted to one gear, and one gear only.

And that was to save Marigold at any cost.


	10. Of Guinevere and Lancelot - Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This Chapter is HARD 'M' chapter I'm going to ever write. Some very rough and dark stuff ahead, so be advised.

With sprinted thumps on plush carpeted corridor, George Crawley's feet echoed in the ancient stone lined halls.

His vision was swallowed by blurs of lit candles and swirling shadows. His silhouette was cast down the end of the hall and racing just behind him as he moved toward a single stained-glass mural at the end of the corridor that looked out over the green yard of the citadel. His shadow grew smaller and more defined as he reached the end of the hall. There, he slid to a stop before his momentum sent him crashing into the glass pane at the end of the stone pathway. There, he quickly observed the scene that had stopped his heart.

Marigold was in a strapless silk nightgown, her golden tresses free and curtained on her bare milky shoulders. She was on her knees weeping and reaching for someone. That someone happened to be Thomas, who was slumped back against the wall on his knees. He half lounged, his hand clutching his shoulder which gushed with blood through his valet jacket. His sharp featured face was sweaty, and he looked to be in immense amount of pain. But standing right in front of him - slender arm barred around the elven fair ballerina's neck - was a woman in a nurse's white uniform. Her polyester blouse and skirt fit her tightly like a glove, and matts of grey curls came down under her white uniform cap. In her hand was a Webley MK II that was pointed right between Thomas's eyes. Marigold was begging her not to do it, desperately reaching for the butler. But, teary eyed, the older man only told the girl that everything was going to be okay, not to look. It was all he kept telling the loveliest of young teenage girls to do … to look away.

It was by the grimmest of luck that George's rounding turn of a slide down the hall had caught the nurse's attention - his shadow upon the wall announcing his coming. He had only caught the briefest of seconds of the scene, before a woman with desperate and crazed eyes pivoted her aim. George heard the first shot whiz by, embedding in the medieval stonework of the hall. He quickly rolled defensively away from the second shot behind the corner for cover.

"George!" Marigold screamed in fear and worry as the nurse continued to restrain her in a choke hold.

Pointing his gun to the ceiling by the ear, the youth quickly peaked over in pavlovian response to the girl he loved calling to him. But his reward was the painful sanding of stone particles exploding by his cheek. The bullet ricocheting near his face and shattering the ancient stained-glass mural of a local saint from the days of Lionheart and Merry Men. When George leaned forward from cover once more, he saw that the nurse was pointing her Webley at Thomas again.

Quickly, the boy pivoted from his cover corner and fired his second shot from the 'Ray Gun'. Though a 'dead shot' with his weapon, he knew his subconscious was ruled by fear of hitting Marigold. Thus, his shot went right by the woman's face, the force of the high caliber bullet exploded stone right near her. He heard her cry out as it tore and burred into the flesh of her cheek. Strangely - or as strange a contradiction as he had ever seen - the nurse fell on Marigold, covering her in maternal protection and taking all the sharp debris of George's fire. But when the exploding stone turned to dust. The intruder, disguised as Bertie Pelham's nurse, hooked an arm across Marigold silken breast and began dragging the ballerina away. A familiar chill rose in George's chest as he saw the young beauty grasp tightly the corner of the corridor, fighting the tugging of her captor to pry her back into her power.

"George!" She screamed, reaching for him.

The boy didn't hesitate to come out of cover, and took a sharp step forward, body torqueing. But just as he was about to unleash his energy and momentum to go speeding toward Marigold's outstretched hand, the nurse reappeared again. She checked the ballerina into the wall with all her weight, crushing her between the stone and her pelvis. Then, the woman pointed and fired. darting, George moved swiftly as shadow, advancing forward into the cover of a maid's closet. Another part of the ancient stone corridor was dusted to powder in a warped and manic sound. The bouncing bullet embedded in a thick oaken bedroom door yards away from the action. But by the time that George looked over, about to return fire, he saw he had no shot. Marigold was in a choke hold again, her fingers sliding from their tenuous grip on the stone corner of the hall that led to the battlements.

"George, Geohohorge!" She sobbed, struggling to hold on just a moment longer. "Dragon's Roost!" She shouted. "George, Dragon's Roost!" She said one more time, before she was finally torn away, being dragged down the hall.

"Marigold!" the vigilante roared in alarm. He was hesitant to move from cover, but he was driven by the cries of anguish from his golden-haired angel.

He sprang forth, moving quickly, flying toward the hall that led to the walls of the citadel. He took cover behind the corner of the wall that Marigold had been holding on to for dear life. He was incensed by the lingering scent of her sweet perfume. In the distance he heard the girl repeating the words "Dragon Roost". But when George finally glanced down the corridor, weapon drawn to action, he saw nothing but the large shadow of Marigold and her captor as they turned the corner, the girl being used as a shield as they backed away.

"Shit!" George barked in frustration as he broke cover.

His gaze lingering down the hall for only a second. This was not the young man's first time in these situations. This mad woman was not the first person who had ever taken a girl he loved hostage. And the circumstances, as grim as it was, was not the worst that he and Marigold had faced together. This false nurse wielding her husband's service revolver, would never be The Necromancer who had taken Marigold captive in order to draw George out for what he had assumed would be their final duel.

He only thanked Christ that the ballerina was an angelically gentle creature, unable to harm anything in this world. It had kept her alive before and it would again. Had it been Sybbie, all Hell would've broken loose. The fire hearted raven-haired beauty had been captured herself in the past, but the girl's attitudes and temperament would've thrown all his plans out the door. By now, she would've either have escaped her captor, turned the tables on them, or most likely would've gotten herself killed. Taking Sybil Afton Branson into any dangerous situation was a roll of the dice at the best of times. Her courage was only rivaled by her stupidity and fey aggression of bull-headed disregard.

Finally, he turned and rushed back toward the wounded man in a lounging heap against the wall. "Forget about me, Captain … Ms. Marigold … go get Ms. Marigold!" Thomas's teeth chattered from the sheer pain of his wound as he clutched his shoulder.

"The hell did I tell you about watching your corners …?!" George chastised in a huff, ignoring the butler's pleas. "Move your hand … get it out of the damn way!" George finally snapped at the man when he refused to comply, painfully over talking George, ordering him to go get Marigold.

He finally forced the butler to remove his wounded hand from the war. There was a lot of blood. George saw that the shot went clean through. Looking up above them, there was a splattering from the exit wound and the lead and copper cap that was imbedded into the stone wall where Thomas got shot.

"Kissed by an angel …" George breathed a panted scoff with a shake of his head.

Thomas swallowed. "After closing off the main servant's entrances, we went to go get Ms. Marigold in her and Ms. Sybbie's room, she wasn't there. I knew that if Ms. Marigold wasn't in their room, then she'd be with Lord Hexham in his. We were using the servant's main stairs to this side of the castle to close off the shortcut to the battlements when we ran into her dragging Ms. Marigold down the hall … She got Billy first, when he was turning the corner … Got me in the shoulder when I went for the shotgun." Thomas sucked in a breath.

George, in conclusion of the context clue, turned and saw that by a servant's door was an older man in valet's suit with grey hair and a groomed mustache. He lay face first on the ground, a bullet hole right between his eyes. George had recognized him as old Billy Solomon, his Uncle Bertie's valet. He wasn't a bad man, loyal even after his employer was stricken in a coma. He had stayed, looking to Bertie's grooming and comfort in his vegetative state. He had also been known to be his Aunt Edith's eyes and ears of the goings on with her husband after he fell back into the care of his scarred and delusional mad mother. George felt a numbness in his chest at the sight of his body. There was something automatic, unthinking, when the young man crossed himself in a Catholic sign of respect.

But for all the boy's bluster, Americanization, and learned alien ways that didn't match or fit with the customs of the British Upper Classes. There was never a clearer sign of the harsher world and attitudes that George Crawley was forced to adapt too in the, almost callous, way that he kicked over the dead valet's body. Thomas only watched in shock as George, without a scruple, began going through the man's pockets. Had Thomas not been in so much pain, he might have been shocked both audibly and physically by the cold way that the youth turned out the dead man's body. But he saw that George took no money or valuables - searching for something else, something specific. But when he didn't find it, he Instead, ripped open the dead man's livery shirt and stripped it off him, leaving the old valet with bare arms in a white tank top. Then, the youth undid the dead man's belt and slipped it from his waist. There was a calm, unfeeling, way in which George stripped the dead man's body that spoke to his over familiarity to these situations, to the cheapness of life.

Thomas felt his heart hurt at the lack of reverence and guerilla resourcefulness of the boy's treatment of the dead, knowing that he hadn't learned this from the warmth and safety of the last eight years of his life.

George got to his feet and trotted over to the open door that led to the servant's staircase of the castle's downstairs. "BAXTER!" the youth roared. "BAXTER, GET UP HERE!" His voice echoed thunderously, its force bull rushing downward with thudding slams through the hollow corridor below. When he was done, he rushed back over to Thomas, kneeling by the bleeding man.

"Take your hand away!" he ordered again, bunching up the valet's shirt. The butler let out a pained grown when the young master lifted his bloody jacket and stuffed the wadded-up shirt against the wound underneath. Then, he took the belt and began looping it around the man's shoulder. Thomas immediately grasped George's shirt, balling it in his hand in extreme pain when the boy began tightening the belt, using it as a makeshift tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

"BAXTER! NOW!" George roared back down the open door.

Just as he finished, the clacking sound of feminine shoes sprinted up the last of the steps. From the ascent of the stairs and through the door was a couple of figures. Mrs. Baxter's hair was waved, though with much more volume and curl to fit the latest fashion. She looked older than George remembered, but not enough to be considered an old woman, but enough to be described middle-aged. She wore a pair of horn-rimmed glasses which she immediately took off in shock and fear at the sight of a wounded and profusely sweating Thomas. The butler was holding to the young master in pain as George secured the tourniquet by fastening the belt. Anna looked white as a sheet, having followed her colleague up, responding maternally to the distress in George's voice. The woman's grey eyes were focused on the dead Mr. Solomon whose blank stare gazed to the ceiling, a terrible bullet hole right between them, the blood running down his face and staining his mustache.

"Baxter, get Thomas below …" The youth ordered. "Find some of Donk's Sherri in his suitcase. It's behind the lining under his shorts, he hides it there from Granny when they travel. Use it to clean the wound and bandage him up." The youth got to his feet.

"Yes, Cap'n … of course, Cap'n …" The woman looked frightened and terribly confused to see her old friend so mangled looking. She had also just noticed the dead body of a man she had known for over a decade.

"Come on … help me get him up." George rubbed her shoulder in passing comfort to get her attention back to what mattered as he bent down. "Watch his arm …" he warned as he grasped the butler's hand to help him up, meanwhile the head lady's maid wrapped an arm around the wounded man's waist. Together they pulled a weakened Thomas to his feet.

Looping herself around, the older woman took all her friend's weight as she placed his uninjured arm around her shoulder, steadying him against her side with strong hands of a farmer's daughter. George and Anna watched as the woman and the wounded man maintained a fragile balance as they began to descend the stairs. But before they disappeared into the dimly lit corridor, Thomas turned.

"Master George …" the butler wheezed in pain. He saw that he wanted to tell him something but had caught himself. The youth knew it was a final plea, a prayer, that the young Captain rescue Marigold. But it never came, because, he knew, above all others, even Lady Edith, that George Crawley would not stop till the golden ballerina was safe. From the Bermuda Triangle, to Mount Everest, to all the Circles of Hell, he would chase her captor till she was back in his arms and safe.

"Don't let Ms. Marigold despair, it wasn't her fault, none of this was her fault." Thomas sputtered.

"I know …" the youth nodded. "You can tell her yourself when I get her back." He said confidently. It was enough, the stony quality of the young man's dauntless assuredness that he would rescue the girl took some of the weight off the butler's heart.

"Good luck, sir."

"Don't need it, Old Man."

"You never do …"

George gave a rough smirk as Mrs. Baxter, with a nod, began escorting Thomas, slowly, down the steps. The sound of their shuffling feet and Thomas sliding unsurely echoed through the staircase. When they were gone, George turned to find that Anna was still transfixed on the dead valet. She was shaking, her breath coming out in shutters. The youth placed a steading hand on her silken skirt, and the woman, shakily, placed her hand on his that rested on her hip.

"Anna …" George took a step closer.

He didn't understand it. He damn well knew that this wasn't the first dead body that the woman had ever seen. Having lived with a death mark and Islamic 'Fatwa' on his head since the day he was born. George knew the ins and outs of the dead Pamuk story by heart. He knew that Anna had helped his mom and granny carry the _Ottoman Piece of Shit_ across the gallery and back to the bachelor's Quarters. But he had guessed that carrying some dead foreign stranger across the house was different than seeing a man that she had known for eleven years laying on the floor brutally murdered.

"Anna, look at me …"

George cupped the cheek of a woman he thought and saw as close to family as one of his aunts. He turned her head till she looked him in the eyes. She quickly used her other hand to grasp his forearm in sudden desperation.

"They've got Ms. Marigold …" She reported, forgetting in her sudden fear of the random ambush of violence. As a mother of two children, she immediately put all those indelible instincts of pure love and protective nature into the feelings of fear. She was tormented by the thought of someone else she knew would be murdered. All Anna kept thinking was that she had known Ms. Marigold all her life. She was a girl so pure, innocent, and kind, and she would be murdered before she knew the joys of love, her wedding day, and motherhood.

"Anna, look at me …" the teenager repeated, bowing her head closer to his. "I'm gonna get her back." He nodded. "I promise, nothing is gonna happen to Marigold." He was the picture of stalwart in his promise. "But I need your help …" He nodded.

"Okay … Okay …" She breathed, nodding with him.

They broke apart, the lady's maid watching as the youth walked back to the dead valet. He knelt and removed something from underneath him. In his hand was Lord Grantham's gun that Thomas had given Mr. Solomon while he was attempting to lock the servant's passage. Stress poured over the woman's face, her hands bracing her hips at the appearance of the double barrel shotgun. The young Captain walked back to Sybbie and their mother's maid.

"I need you to go back downstairs …"

"No … I don't want that."

Anna …"

"No, Master George …!"

"Anna, Listen to me!" George snapped, pulling her against him and holding the woman's outstretched arm as she tried to back away from him. "You are gonna take this shotgun, you're gonna go downstairs, you're gonna find Uncle Tom and give it to him! Tell him what's happened here, then tell him and Uncle Atticus to take the long way and meet me at the east rampart of the citadel at the tower ruins from the western side!" He held the gun out to Anna.

"That is not a request!" He gritted his teeth.

The woman stared at the gun and then the youth. There was a power, an authority, which George Crawley seemed to possess in times of great stress and danger which was hypnotizing. One had no basis to explain it to others, but to simply say that some people were born leaders. In desperate times they had that certain 'something' that shown like a beacon through the darkest moments. They were able to inspire others to the impossible, as they followed his lead to the very gates of Hell. It wasn't that Anna Bates found some secret auxiliary courage in her breast, as she simply did not have the strength in her to disobey the young man's command at such a crucial moment. He was, as it seemed to her, the only one who knew what to do, who had the answers at that very moment of fear and confusion.

"Yes, M'lord …" Anna complied shakily. She took the gun from George and held it in her hand meekly. She attempted to glance to the dead Mr. Solomon on the stone corridor's floor. But George stepped into her sightline.

"Think about him tomorrow, Anna … go!" He pointed down the hall where he had just come from.

"Sir …" She panted, taking two steps backward, cradling the weapon, before turning and running quickly down the passage, rounding the corner.

George lingered a bit longer, making sure that he knew that Anna hadn't faltered. When he was sure that she was gone, he turned to look at the dead valet. He let out a long sigh, his heart thumping through his chest. He took a moment to observe the body in a beat of clarity and mourned it for just a sparse second. It wasn't that George Crawley hadn't seen a dead body in a long time, but instead, he lamented the fact that he had seen far too many in the last year. Much more than there had ever been, or he could've imagined there ever being in Grantham County, in his own home. He had always seen Downton as insulated from the world, that everything that he had seen and done in eight years was a foreign product. But kneeling by the dead Mr. Solomon at his feet, closing his eyes with his two fingers, George was getting a brutal wake-up call ahead of all his family …

"It's happening again."

With the sentiment, the ringing, of Mr. Moorsum's final words to him after storming out of the board meeting of the electrical plant all those months past. George understood now what he had meant, the same thing that he had feared, talked himself into thinking that it wasn't a possibility here, of all places. But deep down he knew that not even Downton was immune from the dark desperations and evils of despair that was carried on the black winds of Depression. And now the one he loved most in the entire universe, in the very make-up of both Heaven and Hell, was the one paying for the mistakes of his Aunt Edith …

And the ones he had made as well.

Getting to his feet, mind racing with all the consequences and guilt of the situation, the boy sprinted down a different passage, following the path in the complete opposite direction of where Marigold was led. He didn't stop till he reached a tapestry of medieval figures astride horse, hounds bounding at their feet, as they charged through a forest. Golden trumpets of mounted servants announcing the coming of the haloed hunters in the cloth mural. It was just outside the guest quarters, the upper chambers reserved for close and valued family. Quickly, George ducked underneath the large blanketing material. There he pressed a panel of the wall.

Cold air rushed over him, cobwebs sticking to the material of the ancient tapestry. Suddenly the paneling of the wall turned into the entrance of a passageway. George grunted in annoyance, not remembering the secret passage being this small. But then everything seemed larger than life when you were eight years old. Also - more the pity - he learned rather quickly that they didn't quite make men as tall as George when the castle was built.

The youth ducked low under the entrance and slipped through the stone path to reveal a long secret corridor that led to a stone stairway covered in dust and debris of long centuries of neglect. The narrow path was flanked by the stained-glass figures of maidens. George could never be sure if they were female saints or some ancient depiction of queens from some lost kingdom to time. He only knew, since he and Sybbie first discovered this door when they were young, that it was some secret passage meant for a woman of some kind. Whether she was some Saxon Princess, or, perhaps, a nun - whose love was torn between the sin of human fallibility in the arms of some nameless lord and the great devotion to God's endless mercy. For a pause, the youth halted his audible clapping of echoing feet as he reached the long stone stairs. In the cornucopia of odd colors lit by the silvery moonlight through stain glass depictions of chivalric beauty, he saw footprints through the dust. But, upon his further inspection, they turned out to be that of a child. And he let out a scoff with a shake of his head as he stormed the ascent.

They had belonged to a familiar young boy who had infiltrated the heavily guarded castle many years ago to also rescue Marigold.

The walls of Brancaster Castle's citadel were slippery by the many centuries of erosion and elements of Northern English weather which smoothed the pocked and chipping stone of ancient masonry. The heavy swirling fog that touched the battlements obscured everything below the knees, making the footing treacherous, with no visible sign of when the high walls ended, and the abyss began. The obscurity was endless and drifting far afield as if conjured by the inexorable Queen Mab herself in this, her witching hour.

Above the fallen clouds that crowned the green hill, at the topmost walls of the ancient fortress, the glimmering light of all the night's jewels shined down. Fields of countless stars glinted like diamonds on a sable stained by milky sheen. The crescent moon of early autumn cast a waning blue light over the battlements. High above the scenery, the cold wind cut like a knife, whipping and slashing, crying like a banshee through the holes and crevasses of the ancient stained stone. In the dim azure light and strong winds, the rippling fog took to the likeness of the ocean. Their tops like wave foam and their body a clear blue, surging and breaking, carried on the tides of the Eastern wind. The entire expanse seemed to look, and certainly feel, as if one was walking on top of a cloud, with all of heaven to bear witness.

Here was the end, the last refuge of a desperate woman. She could no longer go back, nor ascend any higher than to the peaks of the towers. Shifting and echoing came their feet on stone, slipping and nearly falling on the slick moisture which gave no tread to old shoes and bare feet of a freezing teenage girl. They continued to back away, the woman's eyes darting, staring intently at the main door which they had come. She pointed her weapon that way, her feet ever shifting, stumbling backward, navigating through the cloud that had gathered at her feet. Her breath was visible and frothing thickly, tears streamed down her torn and bleeding cheeks. She was grievously frightened, her bloodshot eyes weary and consumed with a black despair. It seemed that she hadn't slept in days, and often she closed shut her eyes harshly, as if someone was pounding on the door of her mind. The voices of children and their laughter echoing from underneath, taunting her, punishing her.

"It's alright, Baby … it's alright, Mummy's got you." She said hoarsely, seemingly lost in some other world.

She gently kissed Marigold on the temple, looking down to see sorrowful emerald eyes. It was not fear, it was not anger, nor hatred in them. Instead there was only pity and sadness in the beautiful ballerina's soul as she glanced up at her captor. The woman saw the single grieving tear on the girl's cheek. The older woman's blood smeared face fell and in it shown at great aging. The woe and harshness of her grief and madness sowed deep the lines on her face, her hair nearly white. It was wordless, the acknowledgement between the two that they both knew the circumstances. There was tenderness in the way she wiped away the girl's sympathetic tear. Then, gently, with a grunt, she swept the girl off her feet. Holding her tightly, the woman snuggled the girl's golden head to her breast as if she was a toddler again. She rocked her back and forth in her arms, her hand patting the girl's bottom in a maternal comfort as she nuzzled her pale face.

"It's going to be alright … It's all going to be fine, Poppet." She whispered, nearly choking on a sob. "We're together again, I came back for you." She kissed Marigold on the cheek.

"End of the line …"

The woman whipped around quickly, crushing Marigold to her. She confronted a lone shadow that was leaning casually against the round tower on the ancient walls of the castle's final defense. George was unblinking, eyes hardened, and darkness in his words. His arms were folded, his weapon holstered, the boy's legs were crossed as he leaned his shoulder against the frigid stone covered in green moss and browning ivy. And yet, George seemed more perilous than if he was fully armed and harnessed for war. The woman quickly turned back to the double doors she had been watching, having expected the youth to come sprinting through them. But she was bewildered as to how, and by what road, he had come to beat her here. But when she looked down, she saw that the beauty in her grasp was not surprised at all that George had taken them unawares.

This place, affectionately known as "Dragon's Roost", had been named by the children of the House of Grantham many long years ago. In play, and certainly in imagination, this had been where the great and fabled Dragon "Alguzul" had made his lair and often took their treasures. He had been a terrible brigand and a blight on the land, party to all sorts of heinous crimes, such as the stealing of Ms. Marigold's most beloved dollies. The great wormed reptile was the original Teddy stealing fiend who had no respect or love for the things that were right. He was a monstrous creature that lived entirely on crab cakes and rice … as well as the livestock … because, unlike George, Sybbie rather liked crab cakes and rice, thus it was not wholly a 'villainous' food. Alguzul 'the great worm' had been slain many times by George and Sybbie, and even once or twice by their squire, Marigold. And on those days, there was a great celebration in which a feast was thrown. Then, all Marigold and Sybbie's dollies, as well as all three children's stuffed animals were invited to tea. Even among their parents, guardians, and downstairs, the news of Marigold's slaying of the Great Worm was cause for the breaking out of the special menus at dinner. While Robert and Mary had found it odd that they'd celebrate a fictional deed of children's fancy, Cora and Tom found it extremely charming and forced all to play along.

But even after all these years, and the dragon nothing but the past imaginations of innocent children, George Crawley had seldom forgotten the many ways to get to the dragon's roost. But this time, standing against another dark creature who had taken a great treasure, there was nothing innocent about the way that George beheld the woman in front of him. For the first time, he had come face to face with the desperate shell of nerves and delusions since he saw what she had done on this very evening. And he would be certain that long would it be, ere years and lifetimes, before he'd be able to unsee what she had done to those who loved her.

Fore in the first dark of evening, as the last light of the day was but a purple band on the horizon against the silhouette of Downton Abbey in the distance, George had been led to the foul deed. A crowd of town's folk had gathered outside the quaint residence of Yew Tree House at the edge of Downton. Everyone was whispering among themselves, old women praying, and young mothers shaking their heads - some being filled with terror had fled the scene. But no one dared to enter the ivy-covered house with rose trellises flanking the red door to the charming home. The entrance had laid open were the sheriff had come in having been sought out to the reports of terrible screams coming from inside the residence. Once he had gone in, he had immediately gone out. Even then, George saw that the man hung back when they once more approached the cottage.

Yet, as long as George lived, he would never forget the sight he saw before him.

Inside the home, within the kitchen, an older man with much white in his hair was on his knees by the table. He was dressed in jacket and still wore his hat, clearly having been gone and returned home … to this. In his arms was a small child, no older than four. Vomit ringed his mouth, blood ran down his nose, and his eyes were open and lifeless. The small boy lay limply in his grandfather's arms. Around him at the dinner table were more bodies. A boy of seventeen - his father's hair and his mother's face - lay slumped over his place at the table, his head buried in his stew. A woman of twenty, with lush blonde hair, and pale face lay dead on the kitchen floor. Next to her a toddler girl, which looked just like her, lay awkwardly on top of her mamma. The baby girl's blood and vomit staining the blonde woman's breasts where her head lay. A dark-haired man, of the same age as his wife, lay on the floor curled up with a pretty young woman. She had dark auburn hair of her mamma and the lifeless eyes of her father. In despair, the dying older brother had spooned with his already dead little sister, his eyes staring fadingly at his dead wife and children. Next to them, a baby sat by his father and aunt's heads, playing with their hair, making little sounds, blissfully ignorant of the horrific scene he was among.

"Why?" That was what the man kept sobbing as he clutched his dead grandson. He looked up and saw George standing there, staring in dismay at the massacred family. But the man could only ask his young captain the same question, repeatedly. He couldn't understand why she would do this? How she could do this? They had families of their own! Maisie was getting married next week! Why?! Why would his wife do this to them? How could this have happened to the people he loved?

Then, he grabbed the youth's leather coat's lapels from his knees and asked why – God - why was he still alive? His sobs were broken and unhinged as he cradled his dead grandson in his arms and fell. George watched, hearing the sheriff vomiting on the roses outside at the sight of it. But the youth could only place his hand on the man's head as he clutched the four-year-old in his arms. The baby pouted and began to cry when George lifted him up and paced outside the cottage. He seemed to be in a deep trance as he stepped into the evening, while the baby protested, still reaching out for his dead father and beloved aunt, annoyed that he had been taken from them. But the young captain didn't seem to notice as he looked visibly shaken. A grief of great darkness overcame his heart.

It was, as if by instinct, he knew why this had happened and what had been its cause.

"You killed him …"

Margie Drewe said shakenly, madness and despair in her voice. "You killed … you killed Peter … my little Peter Rabbit … YOU KILLED MY BOY!" She screamed in a rage of the deepest sorrow that guts a soul and dissolves it into the wind.

"I did."

Like many other things in life, he refused to shirk the responsibility of what he had done.

George Crawley's face was implacable and made of stone. But ever a deeper guilt welled inside his heart. This was the first time in his life, after so many years, that he had seen the very consequence of his actions upon taking a life. The first-person George Crawley had ever killed, he would soon not forget. But in the end, and ever afterward, George had killed many men and boys in struggle and battle. The cold and professional Tyger Watch - the mercenary company and private army that had massacred the old Village and pillaged Downton Abbey. Many of their bones could still be found in mass graves where they fell eight years later against the rebel army of Grantham in the battles of "White Field", "Grantham Hill", and "Downton Town" that past December. He had slain plenty of anonymous Klansmen in white hoods who wished not to be named. Mexican bandits which had long forsaken their homes in their desperate means of survival in the impoverished regions. Cultists in New Orleans which forsook their own names, much less parents and siblings, to render their service to the dark powers. But mostly they had been nameless, faceless, waifs like him. It was on many country roads that they had attacked in desperation, driven by hunger, thirst, or despair in the hopeless bleakness of the abyss in their grief and torment.

But now, in the blood shot eyes of a crazed mother, he stood before her accusations with nothing to shield his sin. With the heavens as witness and the world cold and quiet, he took upon himself the mantle of everything that Mrs. Drewe spoke with a fell penance. In her words and sunken face, he saw the extinguished light of divinity he had known for eight years in many a face. But this time it was not financial ruin, shortage of food, or the heavy burden of life. It was, because, George Crawley had forgotten. He had forgotten that the men that he killed, who he deemed from the beginning would not leave with their lives, were not strangers from distant lands and hamlets of far off back woods. He knew them, he knew their families, and led them in battle for the freedom of their lands from tyranny. Now, he stood to the guns of what his cold instincts had bought him and the one he loved most.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God …!" The woman repeated, slinking low over Marigold in her arms. She had the appearance of a much put-upon gangly creature who had suffered long in torment till woe was made enduring on her lined and fallen face. "My baby, my baby …" She sobbed in a whisper.

"I saw the house … and what you did." George interrupted her deathly grief. But when she looked up again there was nothing but hate in Margie's shadowed eyes.

"They were going to take them from me …" She cuddled Marigold closer to her breast. "They, they wouldn't let me keep them, they'd take them from me, just like you did with my little rabbit, and the way you did with my little girl." She sobbed, burying her face to Marigold's cheek. "I won't let you take any more of my children … they were mine! They needed me … they would've died without me!" She begged.

But to the very sight of a woman coming apart at the seams, Marigold shrank in fear, turning beggingly toward George. But the young man said nothing, did nothing. He alone was not the accused and accursed that Margie Drewe spoke of - only a part of a greater collective, committing the greater atrocities against her heart and soul. She named all the Crawley family, not just George, but Lord Grantham, Lady Grantham, Lady Painswick, and most of all Lady Hexham. They were all liars, murderers, and thieves. And it was George's understanding in that rant, at the death of Peter Drewe, a dark seedling planted on the day that Marigold became a ward of the House of Grantham had now grown to full fruit.

Thus, it was in the designs of Margie Drewe - lost in despair - that her heart blackened. Conceiving a plot to murder that who had committed the original sin against her family. The boy had left Downton that evening with the instinct that she'd come after Marigold, but now he was vindicated in knowing that Mrs. Drewe had always planned on murdering his Aunt Edith. It was the only thing she had thought of for years, and now she felt, with one more perceived slight of the arrogant Crawley family against her, that she'd do it. But in committing to such an act, she knew that she would never get away with it. Whether she was imprisoned, killed, or if she'd never let them have the chance at either, she would never see her children and grandchildren again. And in her madness and grief, she could not bear to be parted with them all. And so, it was that she had made sure that no one could take them from her, not ever again. Now, there was only one left. And she was the very light that once filled the woman's heart, before she was supplanted by a seedling of great evil when the little angel was stolen from her.

Near womanhood, and in the morning tide of her full loveliness, Mrs. Drewe coveted Marigold to the last.

In a rash action, Margie had dropped the teenage girl's feet and once more revealed her husband's service revolver from the war. Growing up in the wild woodland glens of an obscure tenant farm of a Duke's estate that was divorced from its Duchess - and her Boston fortune. The mismanagement of funds had left her and her two younger brothers hunting stag, rabbits, and wild boar to sustain their family. All the meanwhile the Duke broke up his ancient estate in lost land and prestige while amongst drunken card games. The years of stalking heather and moor had made the woman a crack shot with any firearm that she had grasped. Only the most allusive adversary could escape her aim. And even with eyesight and heart faltering in the laborious years of her late middle-age, George Crawley's was not too small a target for Margie Drewe's focused hatred.

"Mummy!" Marigold mewled. "Mummy, please!" The girl was playing along, but the fear and alarm was real in sight of the gun - which had already killed Mr. Samson and wounded Thomas - being pointed at the man she loved.

But George Crawley didn't flinch, glaring deeply into the woman's eyes.

"It's alright my darling, darling, little girl." She kissed Marigold, nuzzling her nose with hers. "He won't take you from me. You don't have to worry about anything … he'll never have you." She repeated backing away a step or two.

"You're not taking her." George said stalwartly.

"You can't have her!" Margie shouted. "She's mine!" She sobbed. "She's MY BABY!" the woman roared. "She's my baby, my last baby … and she needs her mummy!" She shook her head, tears falling down her lined face, mixing with a stinging of salt water in her bloody gashed cheek.

"If you want to kill her, you're gonna have to go through me first." The youth took a valiant step forward.

"George, no!"

"Don't think I'd only settle for that horrid bitch who took my Marigold … I'll send you to Hell same as, Boy!"

"Mummy … please, don't!"

"You got five seconds to pull that trigger, ya screwy bitch, then you're really gonna start pissing me off!"

All the weight and pain of the guilt, all the pity and remorse of mistakes made seemed to melt from the youth's heart like afternoon sun upon morning dew. All sympathy went away in a flash the moment Marigold's life was at stake. Then, a deep and cold cruelty welled within the young man. A wild malice took hold of him and he became belligerent and remorseless toward the woman. For the protection of his precious golden-haired ballerina's life, he'd not only cut down Mrs. Drewe, but do so without thought. He'd slay any for presuming, whether by sound mind or not, to lay hands on the girl he loved and claiming the right to murder her as one whom was their own property. In his eyes the woman saw the change, the fey aggression in his steps and in his coarse words.

"This is for Peter!" She shouted at the youth in sudden fear of the elemental force within the perilous glare of his hardened cerulean eyes.

But to her cry, George only responded by arrogantly blowing out a puff from the corner of his mouth at her gun barrel.

 **CLICK**!

Marigold screeched and turned away, covering her eyes and burying her face into the collarbone of the woman who held her to her breast. But when she heard the fall of the gun hammer, there was nothing but the metallic noise of the weapon firing dry. There was no shot, no chemical explosion, and no flash of powder. The girl looked up to see a dumb stricken look on Margie's face as she held the gun to George's heart. But when Marigold quickly jerked to look back at the boy she loved, she found only the ghost of a smug look on his face, his arms crossed with a look of ill-amusement.

"No … no …!"

Again, and again, Mrs. Drewe pulled the trigger of her husband's pistol. But nothing happened. Then it only occurred to her what George had come to the confrontation with full knowledge of. She was out of ammo and that her weapon was completely empty. She then looked up and saw the dark and gravely deadly look in George Crawley's eyes as his fists began to ball, turning his tanned knuckles white in a building rage. She had lost all pity and sympathy in that moment. She had her say, and now it was time for justice to be done, for her to pay for what she had so completely failed to do.

And it was from somewhere in George Crawley's past that a demon was shown in his eyes in full might and hate. Then, it was not known what measure of dark designs were in George's heart. Nor how far his hate ran to conceive fully what cruelty had awaited Margie Drewe had he laid his hands on the woman who had massacred children, shot at his mamma, shot his friend, and was attempting to murder the girl he loved. But it was not by his own foresight, but perhaps a power beyond sight and understanding which intervened on behalf of George's everlasting soul.

Fore at that moment the doors to the walls of the citadel were thrown open. From their swinging came Tom with a shotgun and Atticus trailing. But there also came Sybbie and Lady Edith as well. A white fire burst forth in George, and he was filled with a desperate alarm at the sight of his Aunt Edith. Even as Sybbie forcefully tried to restrain her aunt back into the castle, the Marchioness made a grievous error. And it came in the form of a frightened cry aloud for her precious little girl which she saw was being held hostage. In that fury, George sprang forward at Margie Drewe, just in time to take Marigold's outstretched hand to him. His action was born of the stricken madness in Mrs. Drewes eyes in the sound of the voice of Edith. And in the sight of the lovely middle daughter of the House of Grantham, Mrs. Drewe's very soul was poisoned with the hottest and blackest soot of the very furnaces of Hell.

In that madness, she pulled Marigold to her and stepped off the wall, falling into fog, taking George with them.

"NO!"

The whole of the Crawley family stood silent in deep paralyzing shock, watching the three go over, disappearing into the rolling tides of midnight. Then, all at once, their family ran as quick as they could toward the round tower. Tom warned all of them to be careful, to take ahold of the tourist railing on the citadel walls as not to slip and to mark where the wall ended. It was too slow a path and progress for any of their liking, Sybbie most of all.

The girl knew these walls better than anyone in their party. Tears streamed down her face as she cried for the two of her best and only friends in the entire universe. The girl didn't know what she'd do if the worst was revealed to her. They were the people who she was supposed to spend the rest of her life with, grow old with, and love above all others. And she knew, even filled with a deep anger toward him, that if she looked below and found George dead, she'd not even hesitate to leap and take the spot by his side in death.

Fore George and Sybbie's fate and doom were intertwined as one … as was foretold long ago.

"AAAAAHHHH!"

They all paused in fear and confusion when they heard a primal cry of pain and strain that echoed into the clean glittering sable skies of night. It was long, loud, and tormented. But from their sight, in their slow progress toward Dragon's Roost, they heard a hollow ring of aluminum. Then, with surprise, a hand shot up through the obscurity catching the rung of the guard railing of the citadel wall. The sight of it caused a fury of movement and determination by the Grantham family to get there with all possible speed.

Slowly coming into view, with great effort and pained strain, the one hand which held the railing was used to pull up the now visible figure of George Crawley. His face was red and shaking as he pulled himself up with one arm, the other was wrapped snuggly around Marigold's silken waist as the ballerina clung to the boy tightly. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, her face buried into his cheek, and her eyes squinted shut. Swinging his legs, George's feet slipped, dangled, and then - with second effort - hooked tenuously on the loose stones of the back of the wall. He used his leverage to finally push himself and Marigold under the railing. He wheezed in panting as he rolled them underneath the bar and back on top of the wall. With a growl of effort, the youth stopped when he felt them hit the retaining wall. Then, wearily, he lay on the flat of his back, panting, as Marigold trembled on top of him. His arm shaking, he did not hesitate - even in the chorus of popping and snapping of the strained tendons in his shoulder - to wrap it around Marigold.

Then, for the first time in so long, he was able to take the girl in his arms. All fear, anger, and sorrow had been forgotten for just a blessed spell. She fit perfectly against him, and a deep warmth overcame him. He breathed harshly, burying his nose into her golden tresses and took a deep whiff of her perfume, becoming lightheaded, as one who took strong drink after years of prohibition. He knew, only then, after the mire of dark thoughts and fear, that the girl was back where she belonged, safe in his embrace in which nothing could harm her. A place which only his love and safety existed. It was then, coming out of his fog of relief and utter bliss that he realized that Marigold was weeping, clinging to him harder.

"It's alright, it's alright … I've got you." George said running his hand through her luxurious golden locks.

But when the girl looked up, he did not see relief, nor fear … only a deep and everlasting anguish. Tears ran down her cheeks, washing away Mrs. Drewe's blood, as she loomed over him. Gently, she cupped his cheek. Then, after a long moment of torment, looking upon him so close to her, she leaned down and caught his lips.

The world went away, the fog cleared, and there was nothing. The wind had died down around them, the moon was hidden, and the stars became veiled. The world, the universe, and all of existence darkened. And as it seemed to George, all the light of heaven and earth came from Marigold. And through her he was filled to the brim of his soul with all the goodness and purity of the unspoiled world at its creation. Then, and only then, did George understand how long and hopeless his road had been without her, how empty his life was. Deep was the shadow over his heart and mind at their parting, and for a long time he lay slumped as one stricken dumb. Hidden in the obscurity of a world slowly returning, he stared at the light he saw within the girl that blinded him. But eventually he heard shuffling feet and voices calling to them ever closer.

Knowing of the shortness of time, the weeping girl leaned over the young man who had, but once more saved her life, and held herself to him. Tightly, desperately, she hoarded for every second they had left, clinging deathly to the last wisps of clouds which gave their delipidated dream privacy from the cruelty of fate and doom which would separate them once more. Tears glistened from her emerald eyes. And in her sorrow and vulnerability, the young woman was made more beautiful in her frailties of humanity. Knowing how close the world was to separating them again, the girl leaned down, nuzzling the young man's ear and whispered to him with the most pained and broken of heart at the last.

"You should've let us fall …"

George immediately looked to the girl in wonder and amazement at her words. But just then hands reached through the fog and took a hold of her. But not before she met his gaze and nodded in conformation. It was not only of what she said, but what truth and regret was in her words. Of her secret torment, it was no less felt, nor borne than George's. Then, in her, as she was helped to her feet by their family, he saw her desire to be free of the pain and anguish of a life without the man she loved by her side.

All her days, all her nights, everyone in her life talked of the future. Her life was made by grand designs and aspirations which would take her to all the peaks and valleys of those who had come before. And yet, those figures had not the touch of destiny that was hallowed in Marigold's feet. But to all the talks of future and life of greatness, she would've gladly given it up for death. She would stand on the banks of oblivion, forever, hand in hand with the man she loved. Fore there was no future worth having - not anymore - and her life would only be half as full and none the richer without George. Thus, was his very betrayal when he put all those empty tomorrows and strings of unworthy suitors ahead of the only union, the only place, in which they could've been together forever.

But George realized it too late and was left unable to respond when he saw his Aunt Edith crush the girl in silk nightgown in her arms. He watched as the girl's fey words in his ear went out with the tides of night as she snuggled deeply into her mamma's arms. Sybbie joined the embrace as they all formed a protective bubble of hugs around the lovely and stressed girl. She shut her eyes, letting tears squeeze out as she nuzzled from face to face, drinking deeply from all their comfort and love.

Once more, it became crystal clear that George had lost Marigold forever.

Sybbie was chief among those who clamored to hold the girl. Her memory of this place was ever living in the dark recesses of her unveiled mind. Fore it was here in which the carnal pleasures of adulthood were thrust upon her from the mouth and tongue of a woman she trusted. And in the aftermath of her confusion and shame, the incident was not addressed by her family. No one was truly able to explain or comfort her. Even her mamma, who was also exposed as a young teenager to deviance, was never forced into pleasure or pleasuring by her abuser, she only was made to watch as they pleasured themselves to her. But from the dawn of time, such lude acts had been endured by some young girls by vile men, and there was a method and ability by older women to explain and make safe young girls exposed to such evils. But no one knew what to tell Sybbie about how to deal with the deviance and perversion of another woman, a maternal older woman.

Such betrayals seemed almost impossible, unheard of by most. How would the girl ever feel safe, when she was so abused by the one person of gender and age that all of society said she was safest with? Thus, the Grantham family agreed to bury it, to never speak of it again. They'd coddle and wrap the girl up in a steel ring of endless and enduring love, shower her with all matters of fine and lavish material items till she forgot. But she never did. And over the long decay of years it warped and darkened her till she isolated herself from the world and normalcy in the haunting of those nights. Long did the memories of the shame and pleasure ruin and corrupt the girl.

This place of Brancaster Castle tore the young beauty apart, and she feared being alone here, even for a second. Her mind haunted, not by the abuse she endured, but by the sights and sounds of those she loved most in the world who had suffered here. She feared the cries of mercy and repentance of a little girl being dragged down the hallways. She cowered at the long shadows of the brutal fighting between the silhouettes of Mirada Pelham and young George that was cast over the two half-naked little girls sobbing on the bathroom floor. She remembered how they cuddled together in fear for their best friend and this nightmare that they found themselves alone within.

Neither the love and safety in the presence of her daddy, mamma, nor their Donk would do in her return to Brancaster's halls. Sybbie, in the night, would lead Marigold to their room. Locking and bracing the door, they'd snuggle together. It seemed childish to observers who didn't know the suffering they endured here, but to those who understood they'd say nothing of it. Long then did Sybbie hold Marigold's hand as they lay face to face in bed, the girl kissing her cousin on the forehead and cheek, stroking her golden hair till she fell asleep in the safety of the love in the sad blue eyes of Sybbie.

Now, there was only a wild fear in the girl's eyes and heart at it nearly happening again. Someone had come and taken Marigold. Someone else had dragged her through these halls and wished to harm her. They had wanted to take the girl away from them, from Sybbie. And she cried bitterly at being locked away again, of not being able to help. Sybbie shoved her Donk's gun into her Uncle Atticus's chest and took Marigold in her arms protectively, as if she was the world's most sacred commodity. The young teenage girl purposefully bore away her little sister to be tended too. Behind, Edith and Atticus trailed, rushing to keep up with the teenage girl's pace.

When they were gone there was not a hand or comfort for the youth who lay on the floor. He did not grudge it as he got to his feet, arm dangling at his side in uselessness. Instead, he walked toward the edge of the abyss where he had fallen. In the turning of the hour he felt the wind shift. And from it, the haze turned westward, dispersing it upon the ground. There, for a moment, he saw through the blue hue to the shadowed citadel grounds.

Laying at the center of the cobble stone fairway of the otherwise green yard was the figure of Margie Drewe. Her limbs were twisted behind her at odd angles as she lay motionless in a splattering of her own blood. It pooled on the ancient stone, growing an ever-expanding perimeter around her broken body. George stared down unblinkingly into the open and lifeless dark eyes of Mrs. Drewe. For a flash he could see it, could see the resemblance between her children and her - having now seen all four of them with the exact same expression of death upon them. But so often now did the blows come, and so crowded together, that he only felt numb from the revelation.

"Mrs. Drewe?"

"Just missed her … punched a first-class ticket to a reasonably priced dirt nap." George sniffed with a hard-boiled cynicism in his voice.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, a grateful one. He didn't turn to look at his Uncle Tom who had remained to attend to the hero of the hour. The Irishmen looked conflicted when he peered over the wall and saw the woman's body. Tom Branson felt a deep empathy for Mrs. Drewe in that hour, and quickly defused any grudge he might have borne against her. Yet, he couldn't stop himself from being relieved that she was gone. The ugly business between Edith and the Drewes, after so many years, was now at an end. And Tom felt guilty for feeling grateful for the threat to Marigold being over after twelve long years of walking on eggshells. But even then, he didn't think that anyone deserved what happened to Margie Drewe at the end of her life.

"How's the arm?" He asked.

"Had worse riding the Rodeo in South Texas …" George replied absently.

He turned and looked at the young man who cradled his arm. Tom Branson loved his nephew as if he was his own son. And his devotion to the lad was enhanced by, what he would consider, the spitting image of Sybil. The boy - in a different world - might have been exactly the son that Sybil would've bore to him. It was a popular thought among the family these days - so much so - that often Tom and Mary joked that, with Sybbie being much in mind with Mary, and George taking much after Sybil in face and spirit, that perhaps their babies were switched at birth.

But for all of Tom's love and reverence for George, he often found himself tiptoeing around him. The boy, after all, had always guarded fiercely the permanently vacant spot of the role of his father. Robert had stopped trying, Henry was rejected a year into marriage, and Tom was mauled more than once for not 'staying the hell out of people's business' in trying to support Cora in the wrangling of the wildly independent rebel. As far as George was concerned and had often replied in a darkly brooding monotone when questioned about the need for a paternal figure. _"I already have a father."_

Then, there was the business with Henry … the whole business. Tom was lit into by his nephew often for bringing that 'fucking coward' into their lives. He did not grudge the man his friendship, but heartily condemned him for forcing Henry Talbot on his mother, for ignoring the glaring signs of their unsuitability to one another's lives. Perhaps Caroline would never have been born, but what was the use of the baby when she was gone in the blink of an eye? The youth would've rather have never known her, than to have her so briefly before she was taken from them, from him. George respected Tom, but he would never – _never_ – forgive him for Henry Talbot. And was at the ready to wound his uncle gravely when Tom's opinions and judgement was seemingly oppressive. Reminding him of his intrusive behavior that led to a baby girl's suffering and untimely death at the hands of the inaction of the wonderfully superficial romance he had contrived. But when rebuked for his cruel remarks by the family, deeming it "unjust" and "unfair", a sudden and cruel black rage would come over George then.

_"Unjust? Unfair? What would you know of it? Huh? Unjust: is marrying a woman, because, you want to sleep with her! Unfair: Is conceiving a baby girl you hardly see! Unjust: Is freezing when your daughter is on death's door! Unfair: Is leaving your seven-year-old Stepson to rescue her on his own! Unjust: Is allowing him to take the blame for your daughter's death! Unfair: Is how easily your In-Laws let you off the hook for it! Don't you ever, EVER, talk at me of what is fair and just! Cause, Henry Talbot doesn't know a GODDAMN thing about it! … And neither do you!"_

But tonight, at this moment, the broad-shouldered Irishman saw no fire or peril in his nephew. There, in its stead, was a dark pensiveness as he looked down, staring unblinkingly at the shattered corpse of Margie Drewe. His breath frothed in the chilled autumn breeze, the air damp and sullen as the Witching Hours of Queen Mab brought a sudden heaviness to the lungs. Tom frowned in study of the stalwart figure that stood high atop the battlements, the breeze caught in his waving raven curls. Then, he looked down again, and was heart stricken once more.

"Cad a bhí sí tar éis?" Tom asked in Gaelic, wishing to keep whatever madness which led Mrs. Drewe there that night private. Though, he couldn't be sure why, other than to show some respect toward the dead.

"Vengeance ar thoil Dé agus nádúr an duine le haghaidh grá agus fuath." George answered hauntedly.

"Did she get it?" Tom asked George in plain English at his rather profound answer to his question of Mrs. Drewe's intentions. George was quiet for a long time.

"Vengeance is a loan. Quick, expedient, fleeting, and you spend the rest of your life paying it off, leaving your children to cover the interest long after you're gone." With that, the youth looked off in pondering of his words in a deeper understanding and experience of the sentiment.

But then George sensed it, felt it, and heard it next to him after a long pause. It was the shutter, the shivered breath frothing in the boy's eyesight. His uncle had taken to looking over the railing. But in his exposure, he grew shaken, and was not used to staring at dead bodies, at least not like this. Tom Branson was a good man, a virtuous man, and had little experience in violence. The worst thing he had ever done was be party to the burning down of an Anglo-Irish Manor House of Lady Mary's friend in his youth. The worst death he had ever seen had been his beloved wife's. He had committed personal violence only once, in the saving of the King-Emperor's life. Not being fit for military service, Tom had never killed anyone. Nor was he ever allowed into the surgical or trauma wings of the hospital while taking Sybil the things she needed when she was a War Nurse, thus missing the gruesomeness of the incoming wounded.

George had seen it, many times … too many times before. The first truly awful death that a person sees is the one they remember most. They transfix on it, unable to look away. It filled them with great terror that wells deep and unhinges the bolts of their hearts, or worse … their minds. The strain of the many thoughts and perceived truths of the fragileness of the mortal coils that keep them to ground, building to a great and terrible anxiety that could cause permanent scars. And next to him, he heard the strained buckling of his Uncle Tom's heart and mind as he stared deeply - too deeply - at the broken body of Mrs. Drewe lying in the yard.

After a time, the young man placed a hand on his uncle's shoulder. Shakenly, the man quickly darted his eyes away from the mangled corpse and toward the youth. George said nothing, he only nodded at him in assurance that it was fine. He insisted, wordlessly, that the man take his leave, to go back down the stairs, back to the dining room where the rest of their family was gathered. He could tell them that it was over, that they could come out. It was a meaningless task, but gladly taken by the broad-shouldered Irishman. He lingered longer, not wanting to leave the taller of the two alone with the same sight that had stolen the heart from him. But he saw, with a deep sorrow, that George was completely unaffected by the sight of the gruesome vision before him. Thus, then, he knew, absolutely, that the young man had gotten used to these horrors, and much like his injury …

He had seen worse.

But when Tom was gone, George looked down again, to say some final words over the woman. But he found the body was covered by a shroud of blue mist that passed over like flowing water of the sea. His heart was heavy in the silence of the still night and the sound of wind through stone. In the starlight he felt all the stress and fear crowd him and finally overwhelm him. He let out a shaken breath of his own. His mind filled with the snap shots of the dead Drewe family, especially the small children. In his mind he heard Mr. Drewe's cries of anguish in the bitter disappointment of still being alive when everything else had been taken from him.

But when the mist thinned over the body, his face suddenly fell, and his heart was dismayed. Through the obscurity, a young girl of twelve years of age lay in place of Margie Drewe. She had lily white skin, and rich dark hair in perfect drop curls. She wore a white linin dress of fine lace, and a black choker about her pale neck. She was a beauty worthy of portrait, her charm and looks was of an old-world glamour of American Southern Society. The young southern belle lay flat on the ground, her dark eyes cast up sightlessly, peering at George. Blood ran thickly from her belly and chest, her pale hand covering the gunshot wounds. And ever in her arm was a beautiful dolly of a fine and fashionable Lady of Antebellum.

At the appearance of the girl, a great wave of guilt overwhelmed him. He felt the high beams of a spotlight fall on him in sight of her dead eyes which looked right through him. There was a frigid half-breath that left his throat in fright. It had been a long – _long_ \- time since he had seen her lovely face, thought of the silky curls, and the easy smile that had just the twinge of sadness for the woes of everyone in the world but her own. Even in view of her, George still couldn't bear to speak her name aloud. Instead, he quickly shut his eyes to the corpse, covering his forehead with a palm, bracing himself against the guard rail.

It was the same feelings, the old wounds given freshly again. It was the same as it had been that one awful autumn night in New Orleans. He saw flashes of the massacred painted ladies of the French Quarter, the blood bath painted on their fine papered walls running together with the sight of the murdered Drewe family around their kitchen table. The feelings of confusion and anger turning to split second violence inside him which had long and far reaching consequences. An action fueled by the horrible sight which had come upon him, both in the stilted house of a Traiteur in the bayou, and the Stone Barn at the edge of the Grantham Estate. The mistakes of the past which he had spent much of his young life trying to forget was a demonic poltergeist which now dogged his very everlasting soul in his moment of doubt.

And all his mistakes today, in the last weeks, and beyond was manifested in the single terrible image of the worst folly of the doom set upon George Crawley. Fore, he, in a split second of terrible wrath and fear, committed the gravest error or, perhaps, the cruelest mercy that anyone could. Yet, whether by mistake or deliverance, it was an action that a boy, so young, should never have had to take. But still it remained, after so many years, that the greatest torment of all was the unknowing of which it was he had committed that night …

Error or mercy.

"George? George, are you alright?"

Eyes squeezed shut, he felt a familiar slender hand touch his shoulder delicately. The warmth of her nearness seemed a rare comfort as she came to his side. He felt a silk gloved hand trail in concern down his bicep. Her touch was soothing, in a way he couldn't quite describe. It was a strange clash in his mind, the loving tone of concern in her velvety polished voice mixed with the flashes of absolute horror in 'The City of the Dead' that had followed him home after all these long years. And he wasn't sure if he was ashamed or grateful for the shelter from the bitter cold of his guilty sorrow. Desperately, impulsively, he reached out and took a wide satiny hip and pulled the tall and statuesque woman toward him. He felt the back of his hand touch her pale collarbone as he leaned his head down onto her naked shoulder as he breathed harshly in a spasm of sudden fear and shame of the poltergeists that haunted his waking mind.

"It's alright, you're alright."

His shelter whispered into his ear as she nuzzled his cheek. He gripped her hard in the sudden rush of anxiety that caught up with him. Like the midnight tides pushing flotsam onto the shoreline, the flashes of the bubbling chorus of all that had befallen that night had thundered all about his ears and mind like a groaning Tibetan chanting. He clung to the exquisite smelling anchor, cherishing her supple pale skin and its warmth that protected him from the sudden chill that pervasively spread through him. He felt a familiar hand reach out and pet the back of his shoulder length waving curls. She pressed the side of her pristine face against his jaw.

"I've got you, my darling. I'm here now."

But it was the name, the pet name, the voice. His shaking, his harsh breathing had stopped. He felt the soft kisses on his jaw and the side of his mouth, her breath like fresh washed cherries. Slowly, gently, he removed his hand covering his eyes and turned to see who he held to him. All he had known was that the voice, the touch, had been familiar and warm. He trusted it, embraced it, with a fundamental instinct that was as second nature as the need for water in the wild. He didn't think about it, all he knew was that it seemed clean and pure. It could've been his granny. It could've been his Aunt Edith. There was a prayer that Sybbie had returned for him. But it was neither of them - those of whose arms he knew he was safe in. Instead a deep and intimate gaze met his shocked eyes as he leaned his head back.

Lady Mary Crawley's beautiful countenance was expressionless, her freckled cheeks stinging with her son's breath. George frowned hard at the confusing realization of who he had run too in his darkest moment. He looked down slowly to see the possessiveness, the intrinsic familiarity of his grip on her hip, the smooth skintight satin folding to his finger imprints. He noticed her pale arm lifted, felt the black silken opera glove still buried in his perfect curls. There was a confused and loaded silence that followed their long matching gaze. Perhaps even Lady Mary had not realized what she had done.

Eventually, George tried to take a step back. But Mary followed, being crushed even harder to him in the stumble. It was then, looking down again, that he saw that he still had her. The mind wanted to get away, but the heart still clung to the primal comfort that had long alluded him. Indeed, there came a sudden and strange addiction to the pheromones given off, the sudden remembrance of not what it was to be scared, but to go to a place, to have a place, in which one was safe from such emotion and pain. It was then, that George Crawley was reminisced on what it was to have an actual mother who cared.

It took everything, every bit of emotional strength left, to let Mary go, to move away from her touch. For a step she pursued him on some subconscious impulse to reconnect to him physically. Yet, still she said not a word, watching him expectantly, her eyes lilted in a deep longing. She herself seemed stricken in shock, in memory, of what it was to love so completely one being in the world who had mattered most above all. For the sake of his sanity, for the retracking of his mind, George looked away, as not to be drawn in by the same red tinted amber eyes that had haunted him his entire life. Red tinted eyes that he had seen in pain, in hatred, in joy, and … in pleasure.

He paced silently to the black metallic railing and looked over once more. And it grieved him so to find comfort in the dead gaze of Mrs. Drewe. He marked it as a larger sign of how lost he had become, in which he rated his comfort level in which corpses haunted him less. He let out a long and frothing sigh. With a shutter against the weather and dark memories, he turned his back on the body. Lounging against the railing, he placed a hand on his forehead again. He could still see the girl there, laying in the grass, looking up at him with understanding, with forgiveness. She had said, in her final moments, that because it had been him who had done it, because it was George, she knew it wasn't wrong, that it must have been her fault …

Fore, he would've never hurt her.

"Darling …?"

"What do you want?"

George sighed darkly at the voice of his mother. The last thing he wanted was to have the polar opposites - a girl who had never hurt a thing in her life and a woman who couldn't help but destroy everything and everyone in her path – clashing in his mind. When he looked up, he saw that his mamma was rather muddled and confused. It seemed that she had no idea what to expect when she came up here, but it certainly wasn't that. Their touch, their moment together, hummed with a song that vibrated through them, attracting a magnetic pull between one another. It was like the emotional fracturing and cracking of a dam that had held back a torrent for too long. There was no fixing it, no mending it, it was only a matter of when it would break. And neither knew what would happen when it did … or what they would do now that they had tasted but a trickle of what was held back for ten long years.

"I came to …" Mary stopped herself, frowning at something draped over her gloved forearm.

It had been George's coat that he had placed over his Aunt Edith protectively. It had been Mary's intention to counter George's ill-natured snap by offering it to him as an excuse. But even Lady Mary Crawley could not so flagrantly lie of such things now, not when they came together as they did. To say that she had only came here to return his famed coat was an untenable position. She cut herself short, offering him his coat, but looking at a loss of words, her eyes drawn with a deeply intimate gaze that was fixed upon him.

The truth was that she had come with Tom, Edith, Sybbie, and Atticus. But unlike her family, she had stepped back in fear at the sight of Margie Drew holding a gun to her son. She hid and prayed, not being able to bare witness of what might happen next. And when Tom cried 'no' when Margie Drewe took George and Marigold over, she had collapsed, unseen, upon the stairs to the tower. She had clung to her boy's coat and rocked back and forth in shocked dismay.

Now, recovered after hearing the commotion, and seeing that George had, but one more in this terrible place, rescued Marigold at the eleventh hour, she was unable to shake the horror of that awful eternity of time when she thought she had lost him again. All she heard was the squealing tires of a car crash, the sudden stop of weak crying in a stilled crib, and the dreary haunted whistle of the autumn winds through the stone ruins of the old village. She couldn't have bore it if she had lost him tonight, she wouldn't have been able to survive it. And now that he had come to her, held her, and she felt the heady rush of her child's warmth against her skin, she did not know how to leave it.

"I wanted to ..." She cut herself off by offering George his coat back. The youth studied it a moment, before reaching out and taking it.

"I've had worse …" He answered the unspoken admission in her eyes and tone.

"In South Texas." Mary finished for him. "Yes, I heard you and Tom." She tilted her head.

This made George glare. "You still listening at doors and keyholes? … or is that only when I'm around?" He asked with a gruffly flippant growl.

Mary would blush, but she was not surprised that he knew of such things. Of course, George knew of his mamma's horrible habit of stalking her son most of his life. If there was any eight-year-old who knew someone was following him in the village, or a teenager that sensed a presence in the gloom of a London dockyard, it was George Crawley. He had even caught her once or twice. She had lost him in a crowd in a York Street, only to be jerked from the sidewalk into an alley were a double-edged bowie knife was put to her neck as she was pinned to a wall. There, haunted cerulean eyes seemed fierce till they fell in confusion at who was in his clutches. But to the why of such things as Mary had, she was sure he didn't know or understand … and neither did she sometimes.

"I just …" She sighed, hugging her arms about herself, suddenly realizing that a strapless mermaid gown of skintight satin did little to protect from the damp cold of an autumn midnight. "I just didn't want to leave you!" She finally forced out in frustration at his tone and her inability to speak, snapping her eyes shut with a shake of her head. To this George was quiet for a long moment, before something stirred darkly in him

"Why not?" George asked bitterly. "It's what your best at, isn't it?" His words were informed in the fermentation of ten years of terrible memories and long exile in far off lands that Lady Mary Crawley had never deemed worthy enough to care about.

"Well …" Mary called to him, giving pursuit.

But she halted when George turned back, not realizing that she had strode too forward in her outrage. When he whirled around at her loaded tone, they found themselves closer than she expected. But she would not give an inch of ground in her stubbornness. There was something defensive about her defiance, for deep inside it was bursting at the seams of everything she had wanted to say. Mary's feelings were tossed about, confused and foreign, not knowing what anything meant on a night like tonight. All she knew was that he had saved her life and she didn't want him to leave her again.

"I don't particularly feel like myself tonight." She was stalwart in the very breath of the acknowledgement of his cutting remark, ending with a shrug.

"Lucky you." George replied.

There was something haunted and melancholy in his voice, in the sentiment. His words ringing like struck iron in her heart. This dangerous existence with its violent ebbs, bloody ends, and terrible consequence was but an extension of the youth's very life. And for a moment - more exclusive than either Edith or Sybbie had ever came to know - Mary saw the true cost and the real loss to these feats of daring and heroics that George was so vaulted for so long. It was a quiet and still night, with a broken corpse, and a young man who regrets … regrets so terribly much. Then, not for the first time, but certainly in visibility, Mary regarded her son in a different light. There was a love so potent in the sorrowed torment of the tick of brooding on a suddenly sorrowed face. He was a young man who wished to be anyone, anyone at all, then himself.

"Can I help?" She asked. Then, against her better judgement she looked over at the corpse.

"About ten years too late, don't you think?" He asked broodingly.

And it was in one exchange that such a point was crystal clear. For the youth, unlike Mary, was neither horrified nor effected by the site of such a mangled sight. He only looked back over his shoulder at his mamma and remained implacably hard as Lady Mary Crawley writhed inside. Unable to bear the glimpse of neither corpse nor the unflinching cynicism of one who cried when others did as a child. She turned away from the blank and unblinking plutonian gaze of Mrs. Drewe and breathed harshly.

For a moment she felt herself at the edge of the woods at Yew Tree Farm at "The Battle of White Field" and at the creek's edge at the wooded foot of Grantham Hill the next day. She remembered the mangled and twisted bodies that lay there, unshielded, the horror stricken and sunken faces of her own men that lay in heaps and mounds at the foot of the hill. She saw the cold and monstrous disregard her men had for the pale and waterlogged bodies of their fallen comrades that they used to ford the ice-cold stream so more of their mercenary ranks could rush up at George and his rebels that dug in upon the hill.

All that day they had watched the Tyger Watch – Mary's Private Army - parade down the streets of Downton to ticker tape, the denizens waving flags, a brass band playing marshal music in the picturesque whimsical town square lit and decorated for Christmas. So arrogant had they all been that morning, assuring everyone that the loss at 'White Field' was beginner's luck for the rebels, that they'd show "The Comet Crawley" a thing or two. Yet, the best riflemen in the county – Veteran Tommie's all - only ate their cold lunch laconically and peered steely through their gunsights as Lady Mary's line of battle formed and dressed in the snowy woods between the estate and the heights. Then, all day, those veterans of all the awful places in France and Mandatory Palestine slaughtered the mercenaries as they marched right at George's men. The day had not yet ended when the assault was finally, mercifully, called off.

"Dead Man's Dike" was now what they called the part of the estate which the ascent of the hill met the stream that Mary crossed hundreds of times on hunts. 'The High Watermark of the Lady' was the headline of "The London Times" at the great disaster that took place on that snowy late December afternoon in Grantham County. The Tyger Watch lost a thousand men, sixty percent casualties, and all in just six hours of fighting. Mary's resolve, her fervent belief in her ownership of the Grantham Estate by birth right, gained not a foot of ground. And she remembered standing in the woods at the dusk of the freezing cold evening among the bodies of the dead Tygers strewn about the ground and hanging in the trees where they were rag dolled by hidden rebel artillery. She was touched by inconsolable emotion in the sound coming from the unconquered crest of the hill were a lone Highland Piper played a slow mourning rendition of "Going Home". The rebels had hated the Tygers with a passion and a fire that was understandable to only the most oppressed of peoples. But not a man in George's army thought that any human life, even their own worst enemies, should be wasted so arrogantly and monstrously the way Lady Mary Crawley's men had been that fateful day.

"The Battle of Grantham Hill" had not been war … it was simply cold-blooded murder.

Most people thought that Lady Mary was conquered the following night, when George and Edith outsmarted her and the Tyger Command. They thought she was defeated when the rebels took the Town in the night and routed the Tygers. It was common knowledge that Lady Mary's last moments as co-owner of the Grantham Estate was when she surrendered herself to George who had come to Downton Abbey alone. But the truth of the matter was that Lady Mary Crawley had long been defeated by then.

Her breaking came in that quiet and cold tree line, just by the clearing of the hill. It was the golden glow of the dusk that broke through the dreary clouds. The long shadows of twisted tree limbs shading her tall elegant form. It occurred to Mary that day that there was never a deeper or more existential quiet than on an empty battlefield - the foul cold air humming like stricken metal. It was then surrounded by the twisted bodies of the mercenaries, that she came to a terrible conclusion. And that was that she stood in the horror filled sickness of her own greed and ambition.

George and Edith had told her at the parlay on the previous evening to negotiate the passage of the Tygers out of the County, and surrender the town, Abbey, and herself. They had launched a surprised attack on what was supposed to be her wedding day, pushed the Tyger Corp. from Longfield Farm through the Haunted Woods and Yew Tree Farm. By the end of the famed "Battle of White Fields" the Rebels had taken the heights that commanded the Town and the Grantham Estate. It was over, they had the high ground. And even as they spoke, Mary, Sybbie, and the Tyger Commander could hear the tools of the rebels digging in. By midnight, nothing that left Downton Abbey, or the Town, would be unobserved or out of range of their guns. The war was over, Mary had lost, and now she had to think about just how much blood she was willing to sell to buy her one more day of being 'Queen of the County'.

But Mary had been confident of the Crown's military intervention in the uprising. There had been news of a Highland Regiment marching down from Scotland to restore order. And, of course, the rebels had taken heavy casualties that day. The Highlanders that made up much of George's army were cut down by half, and the boy's own command of local men was hurting as well. Shrimpie Flintshire – Overall Commander of the rebel army - was mortally wounded in the Haunted Woods. Evelyn Napier was also terribly wounded and remained in Mary's hands as their prisoner. All that was left to command the rag-tag militia army of Country Boys, Tinkers, and Old Tommies was George and Edith. A teenage boy and a glamorous marchioness who crammed as many books as she could about warfare in the last two months and spent the duration of the battle as a figure head spectator. Mary had an army of trained and proven killers that – despite taking higher casualties then the enemy - still had the rebels 2-to-1.

She had liked her odds.

But, then, George – in dark prophetic explanation - had told her exactly what would happen if she chose to give them battle that next day. He pointed out to Mary and the commander of the mercenaries the situation and the only way that any battle for the heights and Grantham Hill would go. It was a grim and bloody picture that ended in needless bloodshed. He implored the new Tyger Commander that this was not his land, and he and his men need not die upon it for a cruel and empty woman's entitlements. By the end of his speech, Sybbie was in tears, falling to her knees in front of their mamma begging her to listen to reason. But Mary would do no such thing. Downton was hers, HERS, it was her grandmother's house, her father's house, and it was her house! She would not surrender it to the likes of George and Edith, never, never ... _never_.

The damp chill of the autumn night on the ramparts of Brancaster reminded her of that evening, standing among the dead in the silence. She had done it, she had killed those men, all of them. She had not pulled a trigger, she had no say in the order of battle, in the strategy of taking the heights. But she had been the one who gave the word, who ordered them into that dark and soundless oblivion whose terror was frozen on their stilled faces. The worst part was that Mary knew that it was a fruitless venture, a pointless assault. That had been George up there, upon that damned hill, and he wasn't going to run. God didn't make them any better than her boy. But she still was overpowered by a contrarian pride, a dark obsession with the stone gothic castle. It was her life's work, and she would let no one have it. If this would be the end, then let it be one worthy of remembrance … and it was.

Fore, Lady Mary Josephine Crawley would never forget what she had done, what it looked like, what it smelt like, and what it felt like to know that she was a mass murderer. To look upon the hill in the quiet and see her son standing there, upon the crest, watching her through his faithful ancient telescope. That day, that hour, it was not the rebels, it was not superior positioning of armed companies, and it was not George Crawley who defeated Mary. It was Mary herself who was defeated by the horror and fear of the depths of a cruelty untapped in her blackened heart at the wonton destruction of the wholesome veneer of her childhood home. And all for a dark and destructive pride cloaked in a selfish and greedy love of the principles of tradition.

She did her best to hide the glassy eyes of forming tears when she suddenly felt George drape his coat about her shoulders tenderly. He gave her arms an energetic warming rub of friction, his breath frothing in the exertion. It was a true contradiction, his words bitter and uncompromising in disdain. Yet, he had saved her life, protected her from all harm, and even gave her his coat when she was tormented by the damp autumn chill. His love was either harder than a diamond, or he learned to hate queerly in his worldly years abroad. Yet … Mary was fond of diamonds. Furthermore, was she stricken to the very soul by his sudden kindness. Fore, in the throes of such a terrible self-hatred of what she had done, she found an unconditional love shown in such a small action by one she deemed should've hated her more than anyone.

But George only glanced at her surprised countenance with a knowing look. There, in the cold, there was a true commiseration. Both mother and son, haunted by specters of greater sins at the sight of a dead body, perhaps understood one another more than they possibly could know. There was no forgiveness for what Mary had done at Grantham Hill, and for George, he would never be able to escape the guilt of what happened the night that Lillian Bordeaux died. The grief of the girl's passing would forever be etched grimly on George's otherwise fair face for the rest of his life. And it was of this grim scar, whose cause was unknown to his mother, that led Mary to reach out and cup his cheek with her hand. And a single tear slid down her cheek when he nuzzled into her palm with the availing of his pride in the need of safety from only one in the world capable of giving it to him.

There was nothing more terrible than a mother's sharing of a deeply personal trauma with a child, for she both grieved and cherished the thought of such intimate company in otherwise lonesome isolation of shame and regrets of the past.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer
> 
> Nothing in this story is meant to push or make a modern political statement. This is a story set in the American Republic and British Empire of the mid-1930's as is the politics, language, and social understandings of that time period, a simply fact of recorded history. Please keep that in mind before you try to storm the review section on a crusade for better … lunch meat … or whatever you people complain about.


End file.
